Easy Love
by TheOneTrueBear
Summary: In the forest with Klaus in Tyler's body Caroline has a choice. Push him away an unleash her righteous revulsion on him or play pretend and get what she can't deny she wants.
1. Easy love

**Easy Love**

"Easy love" Tyler puts maddening distance between their burning bodies. "Wrong time, wrong place" his eyes flash downward. "Wrong equipment"

He's saying wrong but she's not listening because nothing, and she means seriously nothing, has ever felt so right. The adrenaline from her rescue is still pumping in her veins and the relief that he is alive makes her giddy with a brilliant bubbling joy. And underneath all that she is lost to a carnal desire the like of which she's never felt.

Every touch and kiss feels different, new like the first time, and its mind-blowingly erotic. His hands, always sure, seem more commanding than ever and his kisses take possession of her with a new assurance. Whatever he has been through has empowered him to the point where she can barely recognise the familiar feel of his muscular body.

She pulls off her cardigan ignoring his reservations. "You're miraculously alive," she insists. "We're fugitives on the run. All signs point to hot vampire hybrid sex."

His hands tangle in her hair as she presses him up against the tree behind them and yes it does all feel different. His kisses, the way he tilts her head with his hands is confident and controlling but his lips are worshipful and yielding. It's amazing and she has to have more.

Stepping back she strips off her top and he takes in her full breasts as if it's the first time he's laid eyes on them and his darkening lust makes her body thrum with the feeling that no one, hot even he himself, has ever wanted her, exclusively and only her, more than he does right now.

She dives back into his unfamiliar kisses and suddenly her lust-addled mind catches up and all the pieces snap brutally into place. "Did you just call me love?" she asks, knowing the answer and knowing deep down what that answer means.

"I don't know love," he, not Tyler, answers with a tip of the head and an arrogant smirk that couldn't belong to anyone but him. "Did I?"

And in this moment she has two choices.

Choice one, the one she mentally denotes the sane choice: Push him away and unleash her revulsion. Because she is honestly revolted by him. By his duplicity and wickedness and by her own treacherous desire.

Choice two, the crazy choice: Play pretend. Feign ignorance and get something she can't pretend she hasn't thought about with no repercussions and a clean-ish conscience

She only has a second to make up her mind and later when the guilt hits she uses that as an excuse. She gives a short forced laugh, "Oooh who knew you were Mr sweet talk" she pauses and offers him her terms. "Tyler."

Uncertainty only animates his features for a moment before she sees him make his decision. He doesn't want her like this, shrouded in denial, but he'll take it because she read him right; no one has ever wanted her more. "Well I've got hidden depths," he says to make sure she knows that he will always know she knew. Still he makes the deal and seals their pact of silence with a word. "Care"

He kisses her then with a sort of angry gratitude and his confliction only makes the harsh soft feel of his lips all the more intense. She throws him to the grown with an effortless swing of her arms and straddles him, her hands travelling over Tyler's bare chest while her eyes lock onto Klaus's. "God I want you" she offers him like a truce and the lingering resentment falls from his eyes so that they shine with desire and admiration. "Mutual" he mutters before flipping them over so he's between her legs and his hands can roam greedily over her body, searching, mapping, memorising.

He frees her breasts from her bra and lavishes each one in turn with attention. Kissing and fondling, making her moan and arch into his touch. "Please" she begs without knowing what she's asking for.

He knows. He strips off her skinny jeans and kneels at her feet. Starts there at her ankle with hot open-mouthed kisses while his hands go ahead, sliding up her calves and across her thighs as his mouth makes the tantalizing journey up her smooth legs until he's holding her waist and nipping and sucking at the satin skin of her inner thighs.

She's determined not to compare him to the body's rightful owner. She has to push that from her mind or she won't be able to do this and she can't stop now she has to have him. His tongue finds her through the silk of her knickers and she keens appreciatively. "Please"

The silk rips easily in his grasp and suddenly Tyler is the furthest thing from her mind. Wow, does he know what he's doing with his tongue? One thousand years to practice and she thinks he must have put every one to good use. "Jesus" she hisses and bucks against him.

He works her body expertly, his fingers teasing as he bites and sucks and brings her close only to hold her on the edge while she's pleads out her need in a stream of nonsensical words until he hears the one he's waiting for. "God please, I need, ah, please, God Klaus"

He sucks hard and plunges his fingers into her and she comes with another grateful invocation of his true name. He's inside her before she's even finished spasming and the feel of him stretching her as he begins to move renews her orgasm, or she comes again and the two merge. She isn't sure and it doesn't matter.

The kisses he plants on her throat as he takes her are wet and messy and they make her feel like the most vital thing in the universe. "Caroline, fuck" he mutters into her hair and she drags him by his own hair so she can kiss his mouth again and revel in the clashing of teeth and tongues as they struggle for an uncoordinated moment to find each other's rhythm.

It's their first time and it comes with all the excitement of those toe-curling moments when discord turns to harmony as they learn each other. For a wild guilty moment she regrets that it's not his lithe athletic body over hers. That she's only learning half of who he is. She silences her own mind by bucking her body against him and reveling in the friction.

He growls, a hungry lupine growl and bruises her hips in his hands as he pins her to the ground and holds her still while he drives into her. One hand travels to her shoulder when she tries to reach towards him and he pins her flat on her back so she's limited to wrapping her legs around him in her quest to meld their bodies together.

"Caroline" he gasps and quickens his pace again until he's moving with all Tyler's hybrid speed and she's fluttering randomly against his trapping hands like a moth in a jar, wild and desperate.

"Klaus" she keens as she comes and he explodes inside her with a savage growl.

He pushes her back as she tries to rise, thinking they were finished, and shakes his head. They kiss again and without leaving her body he flips them till she's above him and guides her hips to ride him.

She loves that. Loves the feel of him below her and the suppliant lust in his eyes. "That's it my queen" he praises her as she takes over the rhythm. "Perfect"

He might be talking about the sex but she thinks he may be talking about her, either way she's never felt so close to it.

Eventually, when even her vamipire stamina is exhausted and the bright sunshine has faded to the crepuscular monochrome of evening he rolls her onto her side. He kisses her shoulder and slips gently into her from behind, taking her with a disconcerting tenderness, his arms wrapped tightly around her body like a warm and pleasurable prison.

She comes gently and for one last time she murmurs his name as they both shudder to a quiet final orgasm. "My love" he responds and turns her so she's snuggle against Tyler's smooth broad chest. "My Caroline"

For long moments she's too spent and too wrapped up in warm arms and loving words to think of anything and then, like the gradually building sound of a distant ominous storm, the guilt comes. He feels so good, and she feels so good in his arms with his fingers tracing invisible artistic patterns on her skin, that she shuts it out and resolves to ignore it and stay that way forever.

Her mistake is looking up from his chest. He smiles at her with that bashfully boyish smile of his transplanted onto Tyler's dark handsome face and she can't silence the guilt anymore as it grows within her to a deafening roar.

Panic grips her at the thought she could be discovered. She broke their deal. Over and over again she broke the terms and shattered the charade of ignorance when she called his name.

She pulls away hastily searching for her clothes that lie rumpled and muddied, but miraculously undamaged, around the clearing. She stares down at her clothed body for a moment and gathers her courage to look at him as she tries with a hopeless desperation to fix things.

"Come on Tyler" she says in a voice that sounds strange and hoarse to her and he flinches minutely, just the barest twitch of the muscles in his face before his eyes, which had been so warm just moments before go granite hard.

"Yes Care" he sneers the familiar name as he mercifully renews their pact and the realization that she has hurt him, that he can be hurt at all, makes her stomach churn. "We need to find Bonnie. I have a surprise for you'

Bonnie is too caught up in her own fear of magical repercussions to notice how poorly she feigns shock at the revelation that Klaus occupies Tyler's body but the hybrid gives her a scornful look and she watches her own feet, feeling shamed on every level.

When he plunges his clawed hand into Tyler's chest and threatens to end her boyfriend she sees the hurt behind the action and remorse mixes with the fear and anger that rise within her.

Bonnie pays the price for them all once again and as the witch cries over her grams she hugs Tyler close and looks anywhere but into his eyes. That night they make love and she's frigid with terror that he'll somehow just know what she did. So she's feeling guilty and frankly pretty sexed out for the day and the whole experience leaves her empty and kinda sick.

"You didn't…" Tyler says after he comes inside her with an emphatic "I love you" that makes her cringe.

"It doesn't matter" she assures him softly and touches his face. "You're back, that's what matters and I love you." All that at least is true and so she can say it with conviction.

"No way" Tyler flips her playfully onto her back his eyes shining with love and the pure joy of cheating death. "I'm going to take care of you, me lady"

He goes down on her and she's desperate to come just to please him but she can't bury her guilt deeply enough and her body refuses to respond. Eventually she hurls herself deeper into her shame and closes her eyes.

She tips her head back and relives being with him. She conjures the feeling of his tongue on her and pictures herself from above spread out and gasping among the fallen leaves and between her legs a lean body and dirty blond hair and she comes.

 **A/N maybe a one shot, maybe the start of something with a real live plot. What do you all reckon? Should i continue I have at least one more scenario/scene/follow on knocking about in my brain.**

 **ps if anyone's following A Scent of Hope there are more chapters coming very soon**


	2. Simply business

**A/N So easy love was originally a one shot but I've decided to write a few more chapters, I'm weaving them around season 4 canon with a Klaroline twist. This one takes place mostly in 4x06. Hope you enjoy.**

 **Simply business**

When she meets Hayley the first thing she feels is relief. Tyler is a cheat and her hidden sins are expunged. The weight of guilt she's been lugging around with her is becoming unbearable and when her eyes fell on the sexy brunette she thought she'd seen a get out of jail free card all wrapped up in sneering bravado and skinny jeans.

But Haley it turns out is just a friend and a good one at that it seems, not just to Tyler but to all and any hybrids ready to try and break free of Klaus' sire bond. She smiles tightly when they tell her about their plans and she knows that Tyler misreads her unease as doubt in him.

He looks into her eyes and tells her again how Haley is not his lover and she feels wretched. So Haley was there for him while he was been breaking bone after bone all over the Appalachian Mountains for her and what was she doing? Flaunting diamond bracelets and hording pencil sketches.

And then Elena goes bat shit crazy and Klaus snatches her and she thinks maybe an unkillable hybrid with first hand experience of the hunter's curse and a thousand years of street smarts is probably the best bet for keeping Elena safe. But she keeps silent and wonders if she's failing her friend because she's too terrified that if she speaks up someone will, somehow, infer from it her guilt.

So off she goes again, the little blonde distraction, to find him in the Grill drinking wine in the low light and looking unassumingly gorgeous and uncharacteristically subdued.

She plays the role they gave her, plays it as only she can with a queen bitch flourish and a secret relish. She will never tell anyone how much she actually enjoys the game, the tightrope walk between too keen, where he'll smell a rat, and too harsh where he might call her bluff and walk away.

She hits the right note with a haughty "That's none of your business" when he eludes to Tyler's fictional infidelity. When the hell did she get so good at manipulation? Maybe the lies of omission she's been telling Tyler and her friends since that day in the woods with him have honed a natural talent for deceit.

"Yes, well, just know that if Tyler was still sired to me he never would have hurt you" he says with a sincerity that troubles her, it hints at a connection between them she'd sooner deny. "I wouldn't have let him."

The silent declaration that he would never hurt her if she were his hangs momentarily in the air and she feels unease crease her face before he breaks the moment like snapping a twig. "Can I at least offer you a drink?"

Even though she's here on Tyler and the gang's orders, she still feels treacherous as she accepts. She should not be drinking with him, talking with him, looking at him with his small pleased smile and his deceptively boyish eyes. She should not be nervous in a way that feels only half like battle nerves and half like date nerves. She should not notice that the mass of beads and leather necklaces beneath his crisp military style jacket are not the same set he wore last time she saw him.

They sent her yes but she can't honestly say she's sorry to be here, that the game isn't enticing, that he isn't, in his strange forbidden way, enticing.

He takes a noticeable breath and her heart speeds up, instinctively realising where he's about to go. "Caroline," he says carefully and flashes his eyes briefly to meet hers before dropping them nervously back towards his drink. Oh god how can he be nervous? Doesn't he know he's the devil? Doesn't he realize that a thousand years of wickedness should long ago have turned him to unfeeling stone? "We-"

"No" she snaps a little louder than she intended and the barmaid glances curiously in her direction, she gives the girl a tight smile and continues in a low hiss. "Seriously, don't. Ever!"

He nods and swallows and once again she sees that she has hurt him. Someone needs to clue him in on the fact that evil villains do not get to look like a kicked puppy not even for the millisecond it takes him to cover it with feigned indifference. "So sweetheart" he says with a dashing smile, the charming shallow smile she imagines he gives any pretty girl be she ally, enemy, or victim. "How's school?"

She looks at him skeptically and rolls her eyes. "Seriously?" she asks. "You want to hear about school?"

What she has just decided to call his "sweetheart smile", cheap and charming, falls away and he looks sincere and determined.

"Is that so strange?" he asks with a hint of challenge in his eyes. "To be interested in you?"

No, she tells herself, it's not strange. But lately what with the drama of Elena's transition and Tyler's sire bond she has felt distinctly like supporting cast and it's nice to be the centre of attention, even if it's his.

So she tells him about boring mundane stuff like her classes and assignments and he listens, like it matters, and asks which authors she's enjoyed and what subject she'll do at university.

In the end she gets so comfortable, and perhaps a little buzzed on Cabernet Franc, that she's ranting about the bitches that constitute her cheer squad and he's chuckling, bemused and endeared by her indignation at their lack of team spirit and work ethic.

She cringes when she notices the cozy laughter in his gaze. "Wow" she says with a self-conscious grin. "I've been talking a lot haven't I?"

He smirks. "Not at all love, you're a vampire now, taking a breath is optional. And clearly overrated" his eyes glint teasingly and though in the low light they're barely blue at all she still loses herself in their captivating sparkle for a moment that is long enough to feel awkward when she breaks it.

"Another drink love?" he offers and she nods and glances at her phone while he orders.

Stefan's messages fill the screen and she curses herself for not paying better attention, she's supposed to be the distraction not the distracted. Elena is gone, they're in the shit, and her stomach goes into free-fall.

She tries for an innocent smile that feels like a crack across her face. "So, here's the thing, I didn't just come here to try to get you to release Elena."

Klaus looks knowing and amused, he's no fool he knows she's there to play him. He's not taken in, he plays along simply because it pleases him, because she pleases him. "You don't say."

"I came here to distract you so that Stefan could go to your house and break her out, which he did. And, don't get mad, but then he lost her." As she speaks she sees his fury settle like a black storm in his eyes. He turns to go with vengeful intent written in every movement.

"Klaus." She tries to call him back, to tell him the rest but he's lost his appetite for indulging her

"Caroline, you're beautiful, but if you don't stop talking, I will kill you." Even his threats are charming when it comes to her and she relaxes minutely into the hope that he'll listen to her.

"They figured out how to stop the hallucinations." She calls to stop him in his tracks and he spins to meet her eyes with a hard demanding stare.

"Okay, you have ten seconds to tell me."

It comes out in a rush and she doesn't realize until she's finished that she's gripping his arm, as if she could hold him there by force.

"You want what?" he still looks angry and she still hasn't let go but her grip has changed from desperate to light and without conscious thought her thumb has begun to turn cajoling circles through his sleeve.

"As soon as Jeremy kills a vampire the curse is broken," she insists.

"And you think I might have a hybrid spare for this proposed killing" he asks in a disparaging tone.

"Well it was Stefan's idea, but yes I'm asking you to help my best friend" she sees a tiny flicker of indecision in him and ploughs on as her hand slides up from his forearm to his bicep. "Please Klaus, its what you want right? Elena, the mark, the cure. Those are the things you want, so help us"

He glances at her hand on his arm and pointedly mirrors the action. Her bare skin tingles under his touch and every hair on her arm stands up. "Not all the things I want" he says in a low voice that makes her swallow nervously. She doesn't drop her gaze, partly because she has to make him help Elena and partly because looking away just doesn't feel like an option right now.

"What else do you want?" she asks hoarsely, knowing the answer and buzzing with excitement and dread at hearing it said aloud.

He tips his head down and looks up at her through his lashes. "Caroline" he chides in a low intimate voice that makes her feel frightened and powerful at once. "You know the answer to that"

A voice, the voice she listened to in the forest, whispers in her mind that there is an opportunity here. That if the price for saving Elena is sleeping with him then who could blame her for paying it? No one would know and even if they did she could claim, believably, that she had no choice. She licks her lips and moves closer her eyes drawn to his mouth for an instant before her better, saner, self exerts control and demands that she stop.

"Seriously" she tears herself angrily away from him. "You think I'm going to sleep with you for it, like some kind of prostitute. You're disgusting!"

He should look hurt again at her rejection but he looks decidedly smug and she realises she misread his intention and in so doing gave herself away. There's no way he missed that moment of indecision or that flash of desire. She curses herself and crosses her arms defensively

"Not at all Caroline, I was merely going to ask you to allow me to take you on a date." He says smoothly.

"What?" she's not sure what she was expecting but it wasn't that and she shakes her head in confusion.

"I do want more from you than simply to sleep with you again" he tells her with gentle determined honesty. Her lips part, perhaps to speak and maybe just because he's stepped in close again and his proximity disorientates her as much as the word 'again' that sets off memories of him like fireworks in her belly.

"One date Caroline. Just one date" he steps back smiling mischievously and spreads his arms. "For Elena"

When she tells Tyler about the arrangement he's already angry about how cheaply they sold out his fellow hybrid and her attempts to give the situation a selfless spin by claiming she thought it would help him and Haley maintain the ruse they think will fool him into not realizing the are freeing his hybrids form under his nose, fall on justifiably deaf ears.

The glass shatters over her shoulder as it hits the wall and she goes without another word


	3. Closing fast

**A/N This one is mostly set if 4x07 My brothers keeper (the pageant) with brief mention of 4x08. Hope you enjoy**

 **Closing fast**

The cooling air of the early evening stirs over her skin as they walk side by side away from the Lockwood gardens and she shivers out of habit. A moment later his jacket covers on her shoulders and she smiles coyly at him as his hands withdraw brushing lightly over her back.

"Thanks" she says. Despite that she doesn't feel the cold she can't help appreciate his attentiveness.

"Welcome love" his smiles and she smiles dumbly back as she tries to think of something to say.

He stops and she realises, with something that feels worryingly like disappointment, that they're at her gate. He turns to her with a crooked awkward smile. "Thank you Caroline. For your company" he says with that endearing bashfulness she'd decided after the Mikaelson ball last year must be an act. Because seriously he cannot have looks this damn good for a thousand years and still have any self doubt at all when it comes to women.

She struggles to return his smile, the moment feels too heavy and charged and her heart is suddenly rampaging about in her chest. "Yeah" she replies and curses the quiet intimacy of her tone. "It was fun"

"That it was sweetheart" his fingers brush back her hair, barely touching her cheek and she's certain he's going to kiss her. "Goodnight Caroline"

Then he's gone in a blur of vampiric speed and she watches the vacant space where he'd been standing for a long shocked beat before she shakes herself irritatedly and goes inside.

Just inside the door she realises she's still wearing his suit jacket about her shoulders and slips it off, folding it over her arm and pensively stroking the material. She hesitates for a moment and looks around shiftily, as if someone might be in her hallway watching her, then tentatively brings the jacket up to her face and inhales the scent of his expensive cologne that she's been catching faint whiffs of all day.

"Urgh" she throws the jacket away from her. "Oh my God" she reprimands herself, what the hell is wrong with her? She cannot be crushing on Klaus. She is not crushing on Klaus. She brings up Tyler's number on her phone and her thumb hovers over the call button for a second before she grunts in aggravation and lays the phone down.

She can't call Tyler. At the pageant she'd felt his eyes on her as she'd escaped the crowd and walked with Klaus along the water's edge. She'd been briefly conscious of not wanting to appear to be having too good a time. Tyler is already jealous enough of the original and she really didn't want to fuel the fire. But if she's honest a glass of champagne and a playful spat over her Miss Mystic application later and she'd barely given her boyfriend another thought.

So she'll focus on something else. Stefan is a mess and Elena is acting like a big Damon loving freak. That's what she should be thinking about. Not Klaus, not even Tyler who'll be fine, but her friends.

She texts Stefan and he appears quickly enough for her to know he wasn't at home

"Hey" she greets and he smiles, warm and sad, as he enters and she's struck again by how unfair it is of Elena to be hanging off Damon's every word like some undead groupie while Stefan, her epic love, is heartbroken and alone. "Are you ok?"

Stefan leans back in his chair and rubs his eyes as they talk. He talks of letting go, of allowing Elena to simply move on with his brother and she rails against it. No, she thinks vehemently, Elena cannot choose the bad boy. No one is choosing the bad boy!

"She's lost," she tells Stefan and wonders if she's talking only about Elena. "Okay, you and her, epic" she sighs. "Her and Damon, ugh, God. There's something wrong with her." Something wrong with me? She flinches internally away from the thought and focuses on Stefan. "Just promise me you won't stop looking for the cure"

"Klaus won't let me even if I wanted to," Stefan replies as he looks away to pour himself a drink.

Klaus. Her mind stutters at the sound of his name and she's assaulted by the memory of his amused eyes as he'd popped the champagne's cork.

"Why does he care?" she asks confused. "He doesn't even want it"

"To make more hybrids" Stefan tells her and she snorts and thinks worridly of Tyler and his suicidal plan to un-sire his hybrid pack and as she tells Stefan suddenly it all clicks into place.

"Oh God" she sits up with the realization. Elena is sired to Damon, it all makes sense just like Klaus had told her it would.

Stefan looks like he's drowning in the revelation, a dozen emotions fight across his usually passive features and she reaches for him, her hand finding his. "We'll fix this," she promises.

"I'll talk to Klaus," she offers, resolutely ignoring the flutter of excitement in her stomach at the thought. "He might know something that can help"

Stefan looks like he's going to throw up and she knows he's worrying about where the sire bond might lead Elena and Damon, neither of whom are answering their phones.

"I'll go right now," she says determinedly. "If anyone's gonna know what to do it's Klaus ok. He's a bazillion and he's all up on sire bonds right? What with all his little hybrid lackeys" she winces at Stefan's pained look and stands.

"You stay here," she orders. "Just keep drinking and try not to think about it. I'll be back soon"

The Mikaelson mansion has never held the level of sinister foreboding that should accompany the town's resident evil, its too brightly lit and tastefully renovated for that. The door isn't locked, what after all could the occupants fear that couldn't easily break the lock? So she goes in unannounced and with a near silent tread finds him off guard next to the large fireplace with a sketchpad on his lap and charcoal smutting his fingers.

"Hey" she greets from where she leans against the doorway and he startles slightly.

"Caroline?" he says in a confused voice as he sits up, closing the pad and laying it down on the table. "Everything alright love?"

She harrumphs noisily at how not alright things are and flounces into the room, throwing herself down beside him. "No" she almost growls. "I figured out what's wrong with Elena"

He restrains a knowing smile. "And what is it you think you've figured out then love?"

"That she's sired to Damon" she huffs. "And knowing him he'll be taking every advantage, urgh"

"You think Damon is aware of the sire bond?" he asks curiously.

"No" she admits reluctantly. "He's just got Elena eating out of his hand and no way is he going to pass up the opportunity to get into her pants. He's so gross"

Klaus raises and eyebrow at her vehemence but chooses to change tack. "So you come to me because?"

"Well" she isn't going to admit, or even acknowledge, that she's running to him because when she was scared and didn't know what to do his was the only name that came to mind. "You're the resident expert on sire bonds right? I figured you might know how to break one"

He gives her a skeptical look. "My interest is hardly in breaking them love."

She doesn't sense any finality or dismissal in his tone so she pulls her legs up underneath her and turns to face him. "I guess not," she says. "But there has got to be a way"

"Perhaps," he tilts his head. "Sire bonds are the product of a deep emotional connection with the sire. With my hybrids it's gratitude and pack mentality but before them I did have a few bonded to me over the centuries. All I had relationship with before turning them, mostly female, exclusively lovers"

She processes that and gets stuck on the tacit revelation that he's been with guys but before she speaks he continues. "It is the strength of human emotion that forms the bond. Elena is only sired to Damon because as a human she was connected to him, deeply and emotionally connected. Possibly, probably, in love"

"In love?" she asks aghast

"Of the few that I sired who became bonded to me all were in one way or another in love with me, poor things"

"Where are they now?" she asks, intrigued and sharply jealous of these lost lovers of his.

"A bonded hybrid may make a good soldier but a bonded vampire does not make a good companion" he sighs. "Not if you prize a lover's spirit or opinion"

She nods, she gets that a sire-bonded drip wouldn't suit him. She knows enough from their own game of cat and mouse to know he enjoys the chase, the ebb and flow, the spats. All that human stuff she prizes too.

"So what did you do?"

"Oh love," he laughs but his eyes exist somewhere in the past, dark and unknowable. "I don't think you'd approve of my strategy here"

"Right. Of course" she rolls her eyes, how could she have imagined anything else? "You killed them"

"I did," he says it so flatly that she checks her judgment, sensing that the stories behind that matter of fact admission are long and tragic. "Better for them anyway. Being a slave to love is not as romantic as the poets would have you believe"

"Well we're not killing Elena," she says downheartedly. She thinks for a moment then she brightens hopefully. "Can we kill Damon?"

He grins. "I certainly have no objection. Ripper might take it hard though"

"I guess" she huffs and pouts. "Damn"

"Sorry not to have an answer for you love" he says and then with a deliberate casualness that she's not buying he makes a questioning gesture with his hand. "Will you have a drink Caroline?"

She hesitates, he doesn't have any answers and she should get back to Stefan. But finally she can't stop herself. "Sure," she nods and she catches a glimpse of his surprised, delighted smile as he moves across the room to the drinks cabinet.

Without conscious intent to snoop she leans over and flicks open his sketchpad and he doesn't need to be a vampire to hear her stunned intake of breath from the other side of the room. "Oh" she mumbles stupidly and feels the air move around her as he vamps back and snatches the pad away. She stands awkwardly but he doesn't look at her and she's sorry she pried.

A sketchpad is like a diary she imagines, private and personal. She wouldn't pick up a journal and she shouldn't have opened his pad. But it's too late now because she did and she can't unsee its contents. Still she's in the wrong and she's big enough to admit it.

"I'm sorry," she offers uncertainly. "I shouldn't-"

"Forget it," he growls still not meeting her eyes and she can see his embarrassment morph into anger in front of her eyes.

"Kinda hard to do" she tries to keep the tone light despite his darkening expression. "I" she pauses and fights to exert control over her foolish tongue. Fails. "Can I see them?"

His head comes up sharply and it's clear this is not the reaction he expected. Honestly she's a little surprised at herself. He narrows his eyes suspiciously and she rolls hers in response and sits back down indicating the space beside her with a tip of her head.

He sits and frowns when she shuffles closer and looks at him expectantly then he sighs loudly and hands her the pad.

"Wow" she murmurs as she flicks through the pages and out of the corner of her eye she sees the tension in his face. Her fingers trace the lines of one of the images, is she really that beautiful she wonders or has he taken some artistic liberties.

On the first page there are a couple from earlier, her hair straightened, expression full of reluctant amusement. The pages tell a reverse chronological record of their, god their what? Friendship? Surely not. She knows if she goes back far enough she'll see herself at the ball or dying of a hybrid bite but she doesn't get that far because one of the images traps her and she stares captivated.

"Caroline?" his voice is uncharacteristically tentative and he is clearly expecting her anger to surface any moment.

In the picture her hair lies spread around her head like a halo in the fallen leaves and her eyes are closed, chin tilted upwards, expression blissful. Is this what he saw that day in the woods, it is certainly how she'd felt when she'd been beneath him; stunningly beautiful and utterly content, at least for a while.

Eventually she tears her eyes away from the image and they find his, dark with something dangerous and unsure. She takes a shuddering breath and lays the pad down deliberately before turning back to look at him and letting her fingers trail over the back of his hand. "They're beautiful," she says and the corner of his mouth twitches.

"Well my inspiration is beautiful." he murmurs and it should sound like a line but it just sounds true as his free hand moves to gingerly stroke her cheek with his knuckles. "Sweetheart" he whispers and she watches his eyes as they flick to her lips, igniting a blaze of anticipation in her body.

"I should go" she says reluctantly, her voice not loud enough to hint at leaving as her hand settles more firmly over his.

"Of course," he licks his lips and she stares at them. His real lips. How would they feel? she wonders. Not like when he kissed her with Tyler's, she knows that. His are fuller they look hotter, softer. His face is rough with stubble, would it scratch? His hand withdraws and her eyes follow the slender fingers as they land over her own. Then back up his arm, slim and deceptively powerful under the thin cotton of his shirt.

Oh god, she thinks, she's going to kiss him. She's not even going to wait for him to make the first move. He just looks so good and they had so much fun today, and he drew all those beautiful pictures of her. She feels like a goddess with him and she's lost to the need to let him worship her.

She leans forward her lips parting, ready to taste him, and eyes riveted to his.

"Caroline" his voice ghosts warmly over her mouth, he's so close just another inch and she'll be kissing him and she can't deny the soaring feeling in her chest.

The sharp electronic trill of her phone shatters the silence and they surge apart, him standing and turning away her drawing herself together with adrenaline pumping and heart hammering against her ribs as she rushes to silence it's crass insistence.

"Sorry" she mutters as she fumbles awkwardly with it. Stefan's name flashes across her screen and she winces, she was supposed to be looking after him.

She looks at Klaus who's watching her with an uncertain expression. "It's Stefan," she says as if by way of apology. "I…"

"Of course" he nods and tries for a close-lipped smile. "You should help your friend. I'll see what I can find out"

She nods awkwardly the feeling that she's been saved by the bell warring with a sinking disappointment that makes it hard for her to command her feet to get her the hell out of there

"Come on sweetheart" he lays a hand, hot and confident, on her back and steers her to the door. "Go and look after Ripper. I'll see if any of my witches know anything ok?"

She nods and smiles gratefully. "Thanks," she says and not just for the help he's promising but for being merciful enough to escort her out when surely he must want her to stay as much as she wants him to make her.

"Oh don't thank me yet love" he smirks playfully. "I'm probably up to some terrible evil. Plotting something fiendish most likely"

She purses her lips in amusement, feeling the awkwardness fall behind them. "That does seem likely," she says with an answering smirk and then more softly, "goodnight." Then she goes with a hidden smile and a light tread to offer Stefan what scant comfort she can.

Stefan crashes on her couch after long hours of drinking and talking and when they wake up all their Elena problems still hang over them. She tells Stefan she'll talk to Tyler and doesn't question why she didn't think of him first. Honestly she's just glad of the excuse to leap straight into the drama so that they don't have to talk about the pageant.

She gets more drama than she bargains for. And when Kim the crazy hybrid bitch makes a play for alpha by kidnapping her it's Tyler that comes to her rescue. He loves her so much and she loves him too, her Tyler.

She's determined not to think about Adrian's warning when Kim was hurting her. "Klaus won't like this" he'd said. Was it common knowledge then? That he cares, that she matters to him. Tyler wraps his arm around her carefully as the leave the barn and she smiles bravely at him. "Thanks" she says with a sincere smile. "For saving me"

He just tightens his arm around her and kisses her hair. She promises herself she won't go anywhere near Klaus again, she'll stay away and avoid temptation. She'll be a good girlfriend to Tyler no matter what. She swears it to him in her mind. No matter what.

 **Oooh i'm hungry if only someone would feed(back) me. See what i did there, i'm so funny sometimes :-P**


	4. Strained loyalty

**Strained loyalty**

"No matter what" she tells herself as Tyler reveals his insane lets-shove-Klaus-in-my-body-and-bury-me plan.

It's utter madness on so many levels. There is so much that can go wrong and even if everything goes according to plan she loses Tyler. She loses them both a panicked honest part of herself reminds her and she shakes her head at Tyler ready to fight him tooth and nail on this.

But she can't look at him as he insists he has to do this. If he sees her eyes would he know that she's almost as scared for the original as she is for him and his pack? Would he guess its not just him she's out to save?

"I need your support," he tells her and his hands squeeze her shoulders insistently. She sighs. A good girlfriend, she reminds herself, no matter what.

She brings her eyes up to his and nods but she's too choked up with fear to speak. She's going to lose Tyler and she thinks she'd have fought him harder if she wasn't so guilty about everything with Klaus, so maybe its all her own fault anyway.

She takes a deep breath and makes her way into the grill. She wouldn't do this for anyone other than Stefan. But he'd been so desperate when he told her he needed her to distract Klaus so he could get the sword and save poor sired Elena. How could she refuse?

How could she resist? Resist seeing him one last time before Tyler body jacks him and encases them both in concrete.

His work stirs her; makes her heart remember his sketches, makes her body imagine his hands. She gazes at it for a long moment even after she feels his eyes on her while she gathers herself enough to sass him. "Here to steal Tiny Tim's crutches?"

His eyes are bright and puckish as they circle each other. "Well Dickens was a dark man. You would have liked him"

"Nice snowflake by the way" she offers

Klaus rolls his eyes in playful exasperation. "Is my work really that literal"

"No I mean it," she says not knowing why she suddenly feels the need to be so serious. Why with him ready to be charming and flippant she's suddenly determined to make the moment significant. "There's something " she pauses and looks at the painting again. "Lonely about it"

He swallows and she can see he's shaken by her words. "I'll take that as a compliment" he says with a grim sort of determination in the set of his jaw and in the moment before he draws his armour of charm around himself again and offers her champagne she sees right through his ancient eyes into the tragic solitude of his soul. Into the dark echoing loneliness beneath his arrogant facade and she has to turn away before she's swallowed by it.

He follows her, insistent as always, and the back and forth of their banter fizzes like the champagne he pours for her. She feels lightheaded and vaguely buzzed as she swims in the familiar eddies of attraction around him and she wants to stay all day, and long into the night. Make him late for his own funeral. Save him. Save Tyler.

Because seriously, screw the pack. They were torturing her just a week ago bitch Kim and drippy Adrian, she doesn't give a rat's ass about any of them. She cares about Tyler and damn her treacherous heart about Klaus. And she doesn't want any of this.

Stefan can't find the sword and their only option is to get Tyler to back down. He won't. He won't stop. His pack and his revenge, mean too much to him. He calls her out on not standing by him, he thinks she's siding with Elena and Stefan, doesn't know she's halfway to siding with Klaus if it saves them all from this madness.

Still she tries to save him, her Tyler. She comes up with the plan of using Rebekah's body. Does what she can to be the girl he deserves in his life. Shuts out all her regret over Klaus, hides it well.

Hides it until Stefan starts talking about how he feels bad for Klaus and then she can't help but voice it too. That clawing guilt in her throat choking her with regret that she is destroying him. That though he's wicked, and god knows he is, he's something else too and now she won't get to find out what.

She wants to confess to Stefan then. He is after all the least likely to flip out and tell everyone and the most likely to understand why she's drawn to Klaus. Stefan may have plenty of reason to hate the hybrid but he also knows him. Knows how dazzling his charm can be, how intriguing his candour, and how disorientating his vulnerability.

But when it comes to it, when Stefan talks about trust, it's not her own sins she confesses. She doesn't tell him about the forest, or the way she's been feeling since. She doesn't tell him about Klaus' fingers on her cheek and his lips so close to hers. Instead she tells him about Elena and Damon and hates herself for being such a coward.

…..

By morning they know how badly wrong Tyler's plan went. When they find out that Haley is a traitor and all the hybrids are dead she's actually relieved and surprised by the callous. "What did they expect?" that runs through her mind.

They went after Klaus, a bunch of cocky hybrid newbies with werewolf tempers and foolish hubris, after Klaus. Didn't they realize they weren't strong enough? Didn't they feel it when they were near him? The depth of his power vibrating back and forth in their veins where whatever magic keeps them alive after death flows.

Didn't they feel, just by being close to him, how he invades the dark scary place inside them all who's power is passed down from him? How he makes it hum and resonate and dance with fear and energy. Or maybe it's just her.

She can't find Tyler in the small hours of the morning and so she goes to the mansion, terrified that Klaus has already taken his revenge. Terrified that though Tyler isn't among the mess of hybrid body parts strewn over the forests floor like so much bloody confetti, he has already paid his sire back in blood for his transgression.

"Klaus" she calls desperately as she burst into the mansion. "Klaus please-"

She's cut off mid sentence when his hand clamps around her neck, lifting her from her feet. Blood decorates his face, accenting his rage in scarlet streaks and she has never been more afraid of him.

"Did you know?" he roars and she can tell from his anger that he's guessed the answer. Still there's a flicker of hope in his eyes. Hope that maybe she is different; that she is the one that didn't betray him and that scares her even more.

She claws at his crushing hand and he throws her to the ground. She wants to ask about Tyler but that will only make him angrier. She wants to apologies, to justify herself, but she knows how hollow it would sound. So she stays silent and looks up at him with scared regretful eyes.

His anger falls away and he takes two wobbly backward steps and sits heavily on the couch. "Did you know?" he whispers and the gathering water in his eyes makes her heart constrict.

"Klaus," his name is all she has for him, a plea and an apology. She wants to crawl across the floor to his feet, climb into his lap tell him that's she's so sorry, so very truly sorry. Tell him how she'd hated this plan form the start. And please don't kill Tyler, please please please don't kill her boyfriend.

She stands instead and when a single tear breaks the banks of his eyes and cuts a cleaning path through the blood on his cheeks she takes a magnetized step towards him, his name falling again from her lips, one trembling hand reaching out to comfort him. Then her phone rings and it's Stefan and the news that Mayor Lockwood is dead.

He hears of course and they both know that they both know the truth about Carol's 'accident'. They stare each other down, both angry, both justified. She's actually angry enough with him, disappointed enough in him, that she's ready to forget her fear and throw down the accusations building in her throat but he beats her too it.

"Did," he takes a step towards her and she holds his eyes and clenches her jaw. "You," another step and her body tenses with fear and rage. "Know?"

She tilts her chin defiantly at him. He killed Carol who hadn't done a damn thing to him, out of nothing but spite, and she will not apologise for any part she might have had in trying to put this monster down. "Yes."

Black veins crackle beneath his yellow eyes and he clenches his fists and leans in close to whispers around his double fangs. "Run"

And she does.

 **A Question for my lovely readers. I am a bear of two minds with this story. So you guys get to chose and option for the direction I take it**

 **Option 1: Keep weaving around cannon, keeping season 4 events much as they are with a klaroline twist. Retell the significant episodes with extra hidden Klaus/Caroline interaction**

 **Option 2: Veer away from cannon and follow a different plot through season 4. Basically I have an idea for Tyler to call Caroline out on her relationship with Klaus and that to influence the events of Into the Wild (the one where Klaus bites Caroline) putting Klaus and Caroline in a very different situation from cannon.**

 **So feedback me and let me know if you have an opinion on which way it should go. And remember all roads lead to Klaroline and neither scenario with have Caroline living happily ever after with Stephan or Tyler. Because well blurgh to that.**

 **On that note is anyone finding season 7 Steroline very boring? I don't mind them as a couple and I love them as friends but they seem to have just slapped them together this season without much build up and barely any passion. The originals by contrast is all exciting and tense and good god JoMo is lovely**


	5. A killing time

**A/N so i asked last chapter if i should veer away form canon or follow it. Generally people said veer. So i have. BUT but but but, I can't let my cannon scenes go either so i am working on the two in** **parallel and will post and alliterative version of this story shortly. So watch this space if you like the unseen scenes cannon with a twist type stuff**

 **Killing**

They killed Kol. She hangs up on Elena, who's finally decided they should fill her in on the latest madness and stares out of her bedroom window for long frozen moments while her mind catches up. Seriously what were they thinking? Killing Kol Mikaelson and risking the wrath of the entire original family. You have to admire their ambition but seriously question their sanity, and their morality. A whole sire line wiped out in an instant, their own kind the world over snuffed out to save Elena from life as a monster.

She loves Elena truly she does. Her friend is the sweetest most deserving person she can imagine. She deserves happiness, sure, but is her humanity really worth all those lives. Did all those vampires deserve to die for it? Did Klaus, Elijah and Rebecca really deserve to lose another brother for it?

Klaus. She squeezes her eyes shut at the thought of him. A few weeks ago his hybrids, the ones he'd tried to replace his family with to assuage his loneliness, turned on him. Now his brother is dead. His annoying little brother who he daggered and fought with and loved and hated for a millennia is gone and she can't imagine how that feels.

She doesn't care she tells herself. He killed Carol Lockwood who was a decent enough sort of woman once she'd got over her vervain and kidnap phase. Who was a good mayor and a good mother and hadn't done anything to hurt him. He'd killed her in cold blood.

Just like Jeremy and Elena had killed Kol.

But she is better than him. She has a compassion flowing through her heart that has long dried up in his. He is hurt, he is trapped, and she is incapable of resisting.

Her heart pounds in heavy sluggish beats and her stomach turns with nervousness and guilt for even considering this. If Tyler knew what she was doing, if he knew she was following her foolish compassionate heart all the way to Elena's house and the fearsome murderer inside then he'd be furious.

Tyler wouldn't understand, he'd see it as a betrayal. But honestly this has nothing to do with him. This is simply her nature. She sees as much injustice in Kol's death as she sees in Carol's and the same pity that moved her to reach out for Tyler in his pain moves her now along Elena's street and up the steps of her porch.

She hesitates at the door and imagines reaching her senses out through the wood to feel him inside, raging, plotting, grieving? She hasn't seen him since the night he killed his hybrids, thinks he has avoided her as surely as she's avoided him. She wishes she could say she hasn't thought of him or at least all her thoughts have been hatred for what he did to Tyler. Wishes that, even after everything, she isn't just a little excited about seeing him again.

One deep steadying breath and she pushes boldly into the kitchen making straight for the room where she's been told they trapped him. She can't see him and in the corner of her eye a movement makes her turn and there is Tyler pottering about the kitchen like that's a totally normal thing to be doing.

"You're still here?" she asks incredulously before she can stop herself. "What are you doing here?"

Tyler doesn't notice the slip; he looks positively giddy. "Gloating" he smirks with bright joyful eyes and though she can't blame him for delighting in Klaus' suffering she still can't ignore the wrongness of everything.

"Hello Caroline" Klaus' honeyed voice floats softly over her from behind, her name said carefully as if the word itself is so fragile it could break in his mouth. Her mind freezes. She came for him, to offer her condolences in some weird vampire way, but now Tyler's here and Klaus' voice is way too intimate.

Suddenly all the supernatural chaos and the big moral question marks disappear and all she can worry about is that Tyler might suspect something of what has passed between her and the original

She glares at him, warning him with her eyes to keep silent before turning back to her boyfriend and making an attempt to get them the hell out of there before she's exposed.

"Come home" she begs. "Don't stoop to his level"

But Tyler is resolved to bask in his sire's misfortune. "He ruined my life," he reminds her. "And I plan on being present for every second of his misery until I can kill him myself."

She seriously doubts that whatever advantage Tyler imagines he has here will actually lead to him defeating Klaus but she decides now isn't the time for that conversation, so she changes tack. A distraction is what they need, to occupy Tyler and keep him from provoking Klaus into spilling the beans about their tryst in the forest.

"Fine" she huffs in exasperation. "Then you can gloat and multitask, this place is a disaster" She finds a tablecloth unfolds it. "Starting with the horrific burnt corpse"

Out of the corner of her eye she sees Klaus watching with a heartbroken expression as they cover his brother's body and regrets instantly her flippant words.

"Tyler's mother is dead." Klaus states, admitting for the first time what they all knew he was guilty of. "So is my brother. We're even" He pauses for a split second and she thinks she's never seen him so forlorn. He must sense a softening in her because he focuses on her and his voice turns reasonable and cajoling. "Call Bonnie" he says. "Get her to let me out of here"

Tyler tenses and she grips hard to her loyalties and turns on the older hybrid. "I will never, ever, help you" she growls at him and watches his eyes shadow with anger.

"How quickly you forget the part where I saved Tyler from the misery of being a werewolf." He says in an infuriatingly earnest tone. "Or the night your mother invited me into her home to save the life of her precious daughter."

He is actually so screwed up, so utterly self-involved that he thinks he deserves some loyalty from them. She's furious with herself for letting things go so far with him, for she wanting him so very badly to be better than this, for being so very thirsty for drops of his morality that she followed every shimmering mirage of humanity he showed her all the way into into his arm.

Her anger boils over and all caution over provoking him and being discovered flees in the face of her indigantion. "How delusional are you? You killed his mother." She indicates vaguely in Tyler's direction and moves closer, magentised to him by her anger. "And let's not forget that we're standing in a house where Elena's aunt Jenna used to live. Or did you think that your charm would make us forget how you killed her, too?" she halts her wild tongue before she goes too far, before all the hopes she'd fought against and yet still harboured for him come spilling out and blow their secret out of the water.

"You know what? No. I am not going to engage in this." She has to get away otherwise she might not need to worry about Klaus spilling her secret, she'll be screaming in his face how she can't believe she ever trusted him, wanted him, slept with him. "You are not even worth the calories I burn talking to you." She says dismissively and it's that feigned indifference that breaks him.

In the instant before he moves she sees his eyes flare with hurt and then she's gasping in pain and gripping the standing lamp he thrusts through her stomach. It happens so fast she barely registers the agony in her guts or the weightless feeling as he brings her through the barrier and into his viscous embrace.

His arms close, vice-like, about her body and his fangs tear savagely through her skin. God he's so strong she thinks feeling strangely disconnected from what's happening to her. How did they think they could beat him?

The floor comes out of nowhere as she slumps lifelessly out of his arms. Looking up she sees him level Tyler with a smug look, his pretty lips smeared with her blood as he smirks. "Now that was definitely worth the calories" he jeers and she has never hated anything more.

She drags herself on her hands and knees out of his invisible prison and Tyler scoops her up and sits her on a chair. He's desperate to help her, his eyes are wild with worry and desperation. "I'll fix this" he promises but his pleas for Klaus to help her fall on deaf ears.

Klaus is petty and childish and just so very ugly to her as he goads Tyler with the half hope that if the younger hybrid will just find the right words, show the proper contrition, then maybe he'll share his healing blood. He won't.

There's nothing Tyler can do because it's not Tyler he's trying to hurt. It's not Tyler's betrayal that has wounded him or Tyler's contrition he wants. It's hers and she can't even offer it up because he won't help her anyway and then she'll die with Tyler hating her.

"Get me out of here" she commands without even looking at Tyler, her eyes are riveted to Klaus'. "I can't even look at him" she grinds out without acknowledging the irony that she can't look away. How could he do this to her? She remembers a line from a film, Kill Bill maybe, so vividly she thinks the hallucinations are kicking in early.

 _"_ _Could you do what you did? Of course you could. But I never thought you would, or could, do that to me."_

Back at her place Tyler lays her on the couch and blames himself over and over for this. Then he has the idea of taking her back to Klaus. "We have to try," he insists. "He's got a soft spot for you. If I stay away he might do it"

She shakes her head, weakly her body is failing fast, so potent is his venom, but she'd holding tight to reality for now.

"No, he won't" she murmurs tearfully. "I betrayed him, he won't forget that"

"No, I betrayed him" Tyler brushes back her hair. "Not you. It's worth a shot right?"

She shakes her head again, she doesn't want to go back and spend her last moments on earth with her murderer. "No Ty he won't forgive me it's pointless."

Tyler opens his mouth to argue again then shuts it and she can almost see the wheels turning in his head. "Caroline" he says eventually in a weak voice. "What were you doing at Elena's?"

Her mind is beginning to fog but that clears it and fast. "I, I came to get you out of there of course."

"No" he says and his voice is stronger now and she can almost see the suspicion rising in his mind. "You were surprised I was still there. So why were you there?"

"I" she starts but she can't think of anything remotely plausible and Tyler read's her silence perfectly.

"Why were you there Caroline?" he demands, anger beginning to break through, making his voice rise.

She still can't answer so he does it for her. "You were there to see Klaus. Jesus you were weren't you?"

She starts to shake her head but his eyes bore into hers and she break. "Yes" she whispers and then more strongly because it's not actually a lie. "His brother died ok, I felt bad for him, so-"

"You felt bad for him?" Tyler explodes, all righteous anger and werewolf temper. "For God's sake Caroline he's a monster. You said so yourself he killed the hybrids, and Elena's aunt and my mom, Caroline. He killed my mom"

"I know" she breathes tears welling in her eyes. "I know, I'm sorry"

Tyler stares angrily at her, his jaw clenched his eyes burning. "Why won't he help you Care? Why does he think you betrayed him?"

She's crying now, guilty tears running unchecked down her burning cheeks and the admission is all over her face. Her head spins and she can feel reality disintegrating around her and the venom in her blood feels like lava burning out her secrets leaving only her regret.

"Did something happen with you and Klaus?" Tyler's voice seems a thousand miles away and she shakes her head but the tears keep flowing.

She wants to tell him no and yes and sorry sorry sorry but her body burns and her mind retreats into hallucination. She sees Klaus leaning over her, eyes wicked and sparkling with invitation. "There's a whole world out there," he tells her and bites his own wrist, the scent of his blood fills her nostrils with a promise. "Klaus" she whisper pleadingly. If he would just let her taste it everything would be ok.

Vaguely she's aware of Tyler's phone ringing. Of jumbled voices, Stefan's and Rebekah's, coming through faintly. "My brother will kill you if you don't get her back there now" she hears the youngest original calling urgently.

"Tyler. Please" Stefan begs, "Hurry"

Then she's being carried again, like floating but rougher, as he shoves her in the car and the engine roars. Tyler - her Tyler how could she have cheated on him? - is taking her back. Back to the monster that hurt her, back to the man who will save her because perhaps she wasn't such a fool to imagine he loved her.

Her mind is gone again, she's dancing and Klaus' arms around her feel like a safe haven. "You look beautiful, my queen" he tells her, his eyes hot with desire and then they're back in his house after the pageant and this time she kisses him and it's exactly as she imagined it would be. "Klaus" she murmurs as his lips trail down her neck kissing gently, tearing sucking pulling her blood savagely from her veins. "No" she screams. "No Klaus don't. Please no, no"

"Caroline" Tyler's voice drags her back. "Caroline, calm down." She realises she's thrashing weakly against his hold as he tries to carry her up Elena's porch.

She flops backwards and he almost loses her. "He's going to heal you Care" Tyler says and she thinks distractedly that it must surely be too late for that. "Hold on, ok, just hold on"

Her heartbeat falters weakly as Tyler kicks open the door and rushes in. "Klaus" she hears him call and she sees the original already straining against the invisible barrier that imprisons him. He's growling at Tyler to hurry and she understands that they're running out of time.

She gasps painfully, only vaguely aware of Klaus' arms encircling her and the smell of his blood greeting her like a home coming, then a terrible pain in her chest and after that only blackness.


	6. Otherness

**Otherness**

She comes to in Elena's living room. The light is bright and welcoming and she feels nothing, no pain, no raging fever, nothing. She closes her eyes and inhales a deep shuddering breath of relief. The air is neither cool nor warm in her lungs and all the smells that she's come to expect now she's a vampire are peculiarly absent.

Tyler is in the kitchen glowering past her with broken rage filled eyes. "You did this," he hisses. "This is your fault."

Suddenly she's terrified to look round. Understanding glimmers weakly in her mind but she rejects it; refuses to turn and confront the truth. The sun shines without warmth on her skin and she gazes at her own hand.

"You were supposed to bring her back," Klaus' voice is barely audible behind her, there's no anger in it, no defiance or justification, it just sounds utterly desolate.

She spins around slowly, terrified of what she will see and yet unable to stop herself turning to the sound of his devastated voice.

He kneels on the floor his bowed head obscuring the face of the woman he holds against his chest. Her blond hair falls over her shoulders and one grey hand lies open at her side.

Tyler passes her, stepping through the invisible walls of Klaus' magical prison. "I'm taking her," he says angrily and the original lifts his head and reveals the veined ashen face of the blonde he cradles in his arms.

He doesn't speak. He strokes the shiny hair and places a lingering kiss on the sallow skin. Then he lays the body down gently and retreats to lean heavily against the wall his eyes never leaving the corpse, her corpse, as Tyler gathers her up and carries her away.

She should follow Tyler but the body, her body, is too horrible to look at so she sits on the couch, registering that she can't feel the softness of the cushions beneath her and watches Klaus as he slides down the wall and sits like a broken toy propped against it's base.

The invincible hybrid, ancient unkillable Klaus Mikaelson, her murderer, lifts his head and stares blankly at the spot where she'd lain and he cries. Silent sparse tears trickle unnoticed from his eyes and that seems more final a confirmation that she is dead even than the sight of her own veined corpse.

His tears dry quickly, far sooner than hers, which still pour down her incorporeal face long after he scrubs his with his sleeve and growls a short harsh growl as if to reprimand himself for such weakness.

He doesn't move though, he sits until the bright sunshine turns to night and she doesn't feel the cold in the air. She is dead she thinks. She is dead and a feelingless eternity on the other side stretches out before her. Tears come again, pointless lonely tears, and with them a wretchedness that has no end in sight.

Eventually the trill of his phone sounds harshly in the silence and he pulls it from his pocket with listless movements and answers in a dead voice. "Stefan. What?"

She doesn't hear Stefan's voice, no vampire hearing perks for dead Caroline it seems. "No" he says quietly. "It was too late"

He listens and his face tightens. "Be careful Stefan," he growls. "I have little patience for your recriminations."

A moment more of silence while Stefan speaks and she can tell from Klaus' eyes that her friend has not heeded his warning.

"Enough!" Klaus roars eventually, his anger is scorched across his face and she knows that if she were still alive she'd feel it vibrating in the air around him. Funny how she'd hated herself for the way his emotions had seemed to echo in her blood. Had despised their connection, whatever it had been, and what she imagined it said about her that she'd always felt him so very strongly.

Now she longs for it. Longs for the sparks she used to imagine leaping through the empty air between them, hot and forbidden and so very real. Nothing is real now, not here in his numb solitude.

Klaus listens for a while with an irritated look on his face. "Well that sounds like your problem mate, " he responds eventually his face stony and dark. "I really couldn't give a fuck"

He hangs up and slips the phone back in his pocket then reaches experimentally through the barrier. It lets him pass and she worries that that might means something has happened to Bonnie, then he looks back at the room, right at her and she imagines for a second he sees her. He closes his eyes briefly and then he is gone.

Everything is weird here she thinks as she materializes at Stefan's door. Time and space are abstract to her now, she moves from point to point in both without covering the space between. She just sort of pops up in different places and time has passed that she hasn't felt. She's trying hard to keep track of the date, calculates that it must be weeks now since she died.

So she's been popping in and out of existence without any control but not entirely randomly she has realised. She never finds herself at the mall among strangers or alone in her room. She always seems to find a place and time where her people are. With Stefan grieving alone at the falls for her, for Jeremy, for emotionless lost Elena. With her mother crying in her squad car parked out on the road in the dark. With Tyler as he drinks in silence at his house and shatters crystal in his hand.

With Klaus as he lounges in his sitting room reading and sipping ridiculously expensive scotch or moves his brush in languid disinterested strokes across his canvasses. Rebekah is chasing the cure with Elena and he's half in and half out of the loop. He doesn't seem too bothered either way. He's just sauntering through his days like he hasn't a care in the world and she loathes him.

She spends too much time glowering impotently at him from the other side. All the rage she can't do anything with she focuses on him, and stokes her hatred to a blazing fire. It must be why she is with him so often she thinks, it is the force of her emotion that brings her to him because much as galls her to admit it he hurt her.

Not just fangs in the throat, venom in the blood hurt but really hurt, because he had somehow convinced her, against all logic and sanity, that he cared for her, that she was special. But he killed her and now he doesn't even give a damn.

Today she is free of him and the sunshine shining off the boarding house is far more welcome a sight than his unconcerned face. Inside things are less rosy; Elena's wild party has left the boarding house in chaos and there is no sign of either Salvatore.

One thing, perhaps the thing, she hates most about the other side is the complete uselessness she constantly feels. Caroline Forbes is a doer not a watcher. Whatever crisis or drama has come her way she's always responded in the same way, she acts. Lists and charts and getting it done, and now she can't even grab a bin bag and clear up a few plastic cups.

Stefan walks dejectedly into the room and surveys the debris with a miserable expression and she longs to be able to do something for him, anything at all. The door opens behind her and Stefan's attention goes to the visitor.

"Klaus," Stefan greets and her heart sinks, she doesn't seem to be able to escape him for a single day.

"I don't have all day Stefan," Klaus moves past her and eyes the chaos with little interest. "Best get on with it"

"I think Silas is in mystic falls," Stefan tells him gravely and she looks between the two waiting for the hybrid's answer. If they really have a two thousand year psycho witch on the loose they'll need to band together.

Klaus shrugs, he doesn't seem in the mood to engage over this or even to flippantly dismiss it. "Right. Well I'm struggling to see how this affects me."

"Look. Silas wants to die and be reunited with his one true love, but he's supernatural, so if he takes the cure and dies, he gets stuck on the Other Side."

That irony barely touches the boredom in Klaus' eyes but he indulges in a retort as he throws himself languidly onto one of the cleaner chairs. "How Shakespearian."

"But if he destroys the Other Side altogether," Stafan ploughs on. "He can take the cure, die, and pass on, but in destroying it, every dead supernatural being will return to our side. "

Klaus sits forward and presses his figure tips together. "Ha" she thinks, so now you care? Now that all your enemies will be back to take their bloody righteous vengeance.

"My interest is piqued," Klaus responds and the boredom behind his eyes is replace with a sharpness that tells her he's already plotting. Clever clever Klaus with all his schemes and self-preservation, much as she hates to admit it she's relieved to see his goals align with Stefan's. Perhaps between the two of them they can keep Silas from unleashing hell on earth.

She stays with the pair as they play detective in Shane's office and when they split up to search for Bonnie and the witch massacre her friend seems to have signed up for she defiantly goes with Stefan despite the voice in her head telling her to stick with Klaus.

In the woods they find the coven, already linked, with Bonnie at their centre writhing in pain. Stefan tries to get them to stop, he tells them Bonnie is a pawn in Silas' game but they take that as reason enough to kill her best friend.

The knife glitters menacingly in the firelight and she calls out desperately for Stefan to stop them but he can't hear her and he's frozen with indecision. Save Bonnie, kill the witches and help Silas destroy the world or let their friend die, foil Silas and stop the two thousand years worth of dead supernaturals pouring back into the world to reek havoc.

He doesn't have to choose suddenly the leader clutches her throat and falls choking on blood to the ground. One by one her coven topple like dominoes around her; A dozen dead witches staining the ground with blood and magic.

Stefan looks confused and panicked and relieved all at once as he rushes to Bonnie's side. Bonnie's stares at the dark sky with blank white eyes and whispers, "The triangle is complete" with an eerie smile before passing out.

Just then Klaus appears glowering angrily at Stefan, "what the bloody hell happened?" he snarls.

"I don't know," Stefan admits and indicates to the fallen witch. "She just died"

Klaus kneels beside the witch, his back to Stefan. "Bonnie must have worked her expression juju," he muses as he surreptitiously pulls a small deadly blade from her throat.

Stefan shakes his head, half in denial and half in confusion. "It looked like-"

"What did it look like Stefan?" Klaus flashes angrily up to Stefan. "To me to looks like you let Bonnie kill the bloody witches because you hadn't the stomach to off your little friend"

"No. I thought I saw" Stefan tries to look past Klaus at the witches body but the hybrid is having none of it.

"Enough" he moves threateningly closer. "Take your witch away before I decide to end her myself. I'll clear up this mess"

Stefan frowns in confusion and tries again to step around Klaus and inspect the fallen witch but a powerful hand falls on his chest stopping him effortlessly and Klaus tips his head enquiringly at Stefan. "Was I not clear?" Klaus asks in a tone menacing enough to make Stefan nod. He gather's up Bonnie and disappears.

She stays with Klaus. What the hell is he playing at? Why didn't he tell Stefan about the blade in the witch's throat? So much for teamwork. She wracks her brain for a culprit and draws a blank. Other than Silas himself, and Bonnie of course, who would actually want this massacre to be a success?

Her musings are interrupted by Stefan sauntering back into the clearing looking distinctly pleased with himself. "Thank you," he says earnestly. "Of the three massacres, this is the one I was dreading."

Klaus turns and smiles coldly. "Silas, I presume"

Stefan, no Silas she corrects herself, this must be one of his mind tricks, nods. "Now about the cure." He says. "I know you know where it is. And I know you don't want it used on you. So bring it to me and, well, you get to live"

Klaus laughs. "You know you don't scare me, Shane, or Silas or whatever your name is, so don't waste your breath on threats. Besides" Klaus give a crooked, wicked smile. "Turns out our interests may actually align"

Stefan, Shane? Klaus had said Shane, it seems Silas has a face for everyone, gives the hybrid a confused look and makes a questioning gesture with his eyebrows. But Klaus just smirks and then she feels the now familiar tugging in her chest that tells her she's on the move again and the next thing she knows she's at Bonnie's bedside with Stefan as he lays the witch down and covers her with a duvet.

"What a mess" he mutters as he settles down by the bed. "God Care I wish you were here"

She smiles softly at that and then she's struck by a sudden realization. She suddenly understands how she moves in this place, what the tugging feeling is. It isn't her emotion that moves her. It's the emotion of the living. They can pull her to them.

She remembers Elena telling her Jeremy had explained seeing Anna as a pulling from either side of the veil. Briefly she thinks of Klaus, of how often she's found herself popping up near him. Does he pull her to him? Under his unconcerned façade, is he longing for her? The question takes her breath away for a moment but then Bonnie is waking up and she has to focus on her friend.


	7. White lies

**White lies**

She loses track of the drama for a while after the witch massacre. She's only vaguely aware of developments because she over hears Stefan telling Damon that Elijah is now back in Mystic Falls and somehow he's the one with the cure.

She's desperate to know more, to find out what Silas' next move is, or how the Salavatores are doing with their mission to get Elena to turn on her humanity, but her mother hits a bad patch in her grieving and she finds herself often at her mother's side.

There feels no tiredness on the other side of course and yet her mother's pain is exhausting and the mundane familiarity of the grill when she pops up across the street is a welcome relief. Inside the sight is not so welcome. Tyler is drunk again leaning heavily on the bar while Matt tries his best to get through to him.

"Ty" her old friend says carefully. "Come on man, you gotta stop this"

"Do I?" Tyler hammers back another shot and reaches to refill his glass.

"Yes" insists Matt more strongly. "Drinking all day, cutting everyone out. I miss Care too, we all do, but you gotta try and get it together man, it's what Caroline would have wanted"

"I don't give a fuck what she would want," Tyler growls. "She doesn't get to decide anymore"

"What?" Matt looks shocked by the unconcealed bile in Tyler's outburst.

Tyler slugs back another shot and stares dejectedly at the empty glass. "I miss her Matt. I loved her and I miss her and I'm so fucking angry with her"

Matt frowns showing those creases in his forehead that he's way too young to have already etched into his skin. "I don't-" he starts but Tyler cuts him off.

"I think she cheated on me," he says in a rush like he's finally grateful to get it out, like it's been eating him up all this time, and her heart clenches guiltily at the pain in his voice. "I think something happened with Klaus, with fucking Klaus. And it's driving me crazy not knowing"

"No way!" Matt is shocked and outraged at the suggestion. "She wouldn't do that."

"Oh she so would," Elena is behind them and she can't believe the darn rotten luck of that. The brunette's eyes glint maliciously. "She totally had the hots for him and didn't she keep that picture he drew for her?"

Tyler grinds his teeth and Elena looks viciously triumphant. "No I'm sure you're right, she wouldn't do that"

Matt valiantly tries to stop Tyler but her boyfriend's mind is addled with suspicion, loss, and bourbon and he easily breaks Matt's restraining grip on his arm and storms off. She follows him even after he vamps away from Matt in full view of anyone who happened to be outside the grill.

Tyler is so far from thinking straight right now that she's terrified he's actually on his way to joining her on the other side. So she positions herself in front of him as he stomps towards the elegant door of the Mikaelson mansion and begs desperately, unheard and useless, for him to stop.

Klaus is sauntering down the sweeping staircase as Tyler barrels in to his home with an angry shout of his name. The original raises an eyebrow clearly unmoved by Tyler's obvious anger.

"Tyler" he says in a bland tone. "Be a good boy and explain what you think you're doing barging into my house uninvited won't you"

Tyler vamps forward and pins the original against the banister, bending him backwards with his hand on his throat. "You dick," he hisses. "Tell me what you did to Caroline."

Klaus' gives a choked chuckle then, in a lightening fast strike, effortlessly peels Tyler's hand from his throat and snaps the wrist. She winces but Tyler seems to feel nothing, he's too drunk and too angry. "I killed her," Klaus says darkly. "I thought you'd remember"

Tyler fumes silently and Klaus' look turns to understanding. "Ah but you're not asking about that are you?" he walks away, heading to the sitting room with Tyler following like a man with a death wish. "Now what makes you think I did anything to Caroline?" Klaus eventually asks as he pours himself a large measure of scotch.

"Because she pretty much admitted it," Tyler grinds out. "But with your hybrid venom killing her she wasn't making much sense. So I'm asking you" Tyler gets up in his sire's face making the original raise an eyebrow in bored challenge. "Did you fuck her?"

Klaus gives that infuriating crooked smile of his and tilts his head, amusement dancing darkly in his eyes. "Yes" he says simply and she has to close her eyes to shut out Tyler's heart broken expression. "But then you knew that didn't you?" Klaus continues conversationally. "You're here for the how and the why. Trust me mate, won't help"

"I'm not your fucking mate, " Tyler spits. "So spare me the condescending bullshit and tell me"

Klaus laughs cruelly. "No need for the details," he lifts both eyebrows almost playfully. "Just know she preferred this" he pokes Tyler in the chest and grins spitefully. "With me driving."

"You son of a bitch" Tyler swings a messy punch that Klaus dodges easily as he laughs tauntingly again, making Tyler's rage boil and his eyes flash amber.

"Easy there, you'll do yourself a mischief," Klaus taunts gleefully and she thinks for all that she's hated him since he bit her, she hates him now even more.

"You tricked her, you worthless-"

Tyler's words are cut off by the original's hand wrapping tightly around his throat. "She was so happy you were alive you know, so eager to welcome you back." he tells the choking boy in a light tone. "Granted she was pretty put out when she finally worked it out." He pauses and his tongue flicks lecherously over his teeth. "That would have been round about the third time I made her scream and she realised it was far too good to be you."

Tyler claws at Klaus hand but the elder hybrid is just too strong. "And it was far too good. She was exquisite you know, your Caroline, the way she begged for more. So thanks for the test drive" he sneers and tightens his grip even further. "Mate"

He throws Tyler away with a contemptuous flick of his wrist and Tyler flies across the room as if barreled over by a wrecking ball, slamming into the base of the wall with a loud huffing noise as his lung compress.

"You're sick," he growls as he climbs to his feet. "You couldn't get her so you tricked her, you raped her. You're sick and you're pathetic"

Klaus is on him before he gets to his feet his hand buried in his chest squeezing his heart. "Sick?" Klaus smirks, "maybe. Pathetic?" He gives a twist of his hand and blood gurgles from Tyler's mouth. "No"

His hand withdraws with a sickening slurp and he turns away and, without sparing his gasping victim a glance, casually wanders out of the room flinging a disinterested, "Piss off" over his shoulder as he goes.

Tyler flees and she should follow him but her mind is reeling with what she's witnessed so she follows Klaus into the drawing room and watches in utter confusion as his casual façade falls away and he shakily pours himself a huge measure of scotch and throws it back in one. Another follows and he's pouring a third when his sister's voice breaks the silence, voicing exactly the question that's on her own lips.

"What's going on Nik?"

Klaus' face tightens but he doesn't turn around, "Not now Bekah" he grinds out menacingly.

His threatening tone doesn't phase the youngest original and she just tips her head and continues. "Why on earth would my wicked brother lie about that? Not to protect Tyler surely. In fact why is your failed minion even breathing, let alone being spared perfect Caroline's not so perfect indiscretions?"

"I don't know what you're blathering about Rebekah," Klaus tries to dismiss his sister but even she can see that he's shaken and Rebekah, who has known him a millennia after all, isn't fooled.

"Yes you do," Rebekah positions herself in his eye line and he focuses unwillingly on her. "Caroline finally gave in to you and now you're covering for her, why?"

"What makes you think I'm lying? Hmm?" Klaus draws a shield of lazy indifference around him and sips his third drink with deliberate casualness. "What makes you think I didn't trick her just as I claimed?"

"Maybe I have just enough faith left in my big brother to know you wouldn't do that to the woman you love," Rebekah states plainly, her expression unflinching and determined. His sister's declaration rips away his mask of indifference and he looks instantly and utterly lost. She takes a step towards him, drawn as always, moth-like, to the flame of his anguish.

He swirls his drink and watches the golden whirlpool inside like he might find an answer in it. "You know sister in all the years I've lived, all the thousand's I've killed, I can count the deaths I regret on one hand. Even those I don't lose any sleep over but…:

Suddenly Rebekah seems to connect dots that she herself still can't match up and the original steps towards her brother, her face animated with alarm. "That's why you want the cure for Silas. Nik are you out of your mind?"

Klaus doesn't answer and she looks back and forth between the siblings in confusion.

"Are you really going to let Silas bring back a thousand years' worth of our enemies just to get some ditzy cheerleader back?" Rebekah demands and she's too gob smacked to be insulted.

"Our sister is right Niklaus," Elijah appears looking elegant and contained and every inch the stern family patriarch and Klaus rolls his eyes in irritation. "This is madness, I cannot allow it"

Klaus turns to his family and raises a hand, palm upwards, in a gesture she's familiar enough with to realize he's about to make his case. "Do you forget Elijah that it is not only Caroline trapped on the other side, but also our brothers? Kol and Finn are both rotting in that miserable eternity too. We could save our family"

"Yes our family" Elijah runs a finger along the edge of the open door as he speaks. "Our brothers and also our lunatic mother and of course father"

Klaus's face tenses in what looks distinctly like contained fear and he answers in a low determined voice. "I've killed them both before I'll kill them again."

"Niklaus, no." Elijah is clearly used to having the final say in family matters despite that Klaus is the stronger of the two. "Even for our brothers we cannot justify unleashing hell on earth." He turns to leave but Klaus' voice stops him. Not filled with anger or indignation, as she'd have expected, but pleading.

"It's all I can think about Elijah," Klaus calls out, and then more softly. "I haven't cared about anything in centuries but I cared about her and I killed her. I am asking you Elijah, as your brother, please help me make it right"

Elijah hesitates, instantly conflicted, and she can see something struggling to break free of the eldest original's impassive expression. "Niklaus," he says and she recognises the emotion as a tiny flickering flame of hope. "Glad as I am to see you care for anything outside of yourself, we cannot drop the veil"

"We don't need to drop it," Klaus argues pouncing on Elijah's tiny weakening. "We just need to pull it back a little. The Bennet witch would help us. She's ready to open the door to the other side for her hunter. If we could-"

Rebekah looks back and forth between the two. "Oh for God's sake" she snaps. "I want that bloody cure Elijah. We are not seriously considering this now?"

"Oh come on Rebekah, you'd make a bloody abysmal human and you know it" Klaus baits his sister and she rises, predictably, to it.

"I would not" she insists her tone rising in shrill petulance. "Elijah, tell him. Tell him I'd make a good human"

Elijah makes an unconvinced face and Rebekah's indignation boils over. "You are both complete bastards do you know that? Fine let Nik have his way, he always does after all and to hell with the rest of us"

"Sister please calm yourself" Elijah remonstrates with her calmly. "I am by no means decided on the matter.

"Niklaus speak with the Bennet witch, if you can convince me that we can find a way to restore our brothers without risking the safety of the entire world then I will help you. If not then our sister may have her chance at mortality and whatever happiness she believes that may bring."

Klaus lets out a shuddering relieved breath and Rebekah huffs loudly. "She'll still hate you you know?" she turns nastily on her half-brother. "Even if you save her she'll still despise you, just like everyone else does"

"Sister" Elijah reprimands sternly but the blonde is already storming out. After a few heavy moments Elijah speaks without looking at Klaus. "Rebekah may be right brother, you cannot guarantee that you will win this girl even if you succeed"

Klaus stares into his drink for a few long moments then throws it back and walks to the door. "Doesn't matter," he says without looking back. And then he is gone leaving her alone with Elijah and a thousand questions she can't answer.

 **A/N I like reviews, i do i do, pop one in the box below and make me a happy bear :-) And if you like dear fic I have a Klaroline one shot called "Then Marry him" newly published that is my Klaroline take on how Caroline might end up engaged to Alaric. Go check it out!**


	8. Dark plans

**Dark plans**

She seems to be always with him now. Occasionally her mother's need for her pulls her away to sit pointlessly by and watch the fat bitter tears tumble down her mother's cheeks. Once she found herself with Stefan as he and Damon tried fruitlessly to torture some humanity back into Elena and she sat by and watched them fail over and over again. She'd been glad that day when the tugging in her chest had brought her to his side.

She's watched him paint and drink and stare at old leather bound books without seeming to read a word of them. She's watched him scheme and plot and call up every witch in his considerable acquaintance as he searches for every scrap of information he can about the other side. And finally now she follows him up the familiar path to Bonnie's door.

He takes a deep steadying breath as he pauses on the step then, arranging his face into an expression of easy menace, lifts a hand to bang obtrusively on the door. "Open up little witch"

Bonnie comes scowling and fragile to the door. "What do you want?" her friend hisses hatefully.

"To talk," Klaus makes and attempt to speak reasonably but Bonnie simply casts him a withering looks and moves to slam the door in his face. "About Caroline" his voice stops the witch before the door slams and it opens again to reveal Bonnie looking magnificently wrathful, her crooked jaw set hard and her eyes flashing.

"You do not get to talk about her," she growls and the expression in her body crackles menacingly enough to make even Klaus lean just a fraction back and raise a hand calmingly.

"Bonnie, love, calm down," he says. "Just hear me out ok, you might hate me, but you won't hate what I have to say trust me"

"I don't trust you," Bonnie spits. "But you know who did?"

Klaus' eyes shut and his lips part, his pain and regret blare like a siren to her, making her pity him in spite of everything he's done. Her old friend however is unmoved. "She trusted you and she ended up dead," Bonnie steps back a little and raises a hand to shut the door. "So excuse me if I don't want to hear a word you have to say. Especially not about her"

The door is closing again and Klaus' face tightens as the anger, which has beaten back his pain for a thousand years, stirs itself in his defence. "Do you want me to kill the few friends you have left witch?" he barks. "Bekah'll be a bit put out if I drain the quarter back but she'll get over it. Elena's not much loss I suppose now she's flipped the switch but I imagine you'd still feel a little broken up if I ripped her feelingless heart from her chest-"

The door swings violently open again and Bonnie glowers at him. "Fine. Talk"

Klaus glances around and indicates to the house with a tip of his head. "May I come in then?"

Bonnie just crosses her arms and leans her weight on one leg, her hip jutting and her lips pursed.

Klaus raises his eyebrows and hold's Bonnie's gaze, meeting her stubbornness with an equals measure of his own. God, she thinks, if this is the team on which her resurrection relies then she's in trouble. And with that thought comes, for the first time, the realisation of how desperately she wants to be saved, how glad she is that someone, even if its him, is trying to get her back and to hell with the risks.

Eventually it's Bonnie that concedes with a roll of her eyes and a muttered, "Fine come in."

She follows them in, wishing she could slap the childish 'I won' smirk of the hybrid's face. Why, she wonders, does he go out of his way to antagonise people, even when he needs their help?

He looks curiously around Bonnie's sitting room, taking in the blend of human and supernatural, the TV, the fleece blanket on the couch, the grimoires and herbs spread over the coffee table.

"So," Bonnie says with no trace of a softening in her attitude. "Talk. Why are you here?"

He sits down and leans his elbows on his knees and the witch sits opposite him, back straight, posture screaming discomfort and mistrust.

"I'm here to ask for your help Bonnie," Klaus says in that open sincere way that she always trusted but makes her friend scoff. "Just hear me out." He cuts off her inevitable rebuff with a raised hand and clenching jaw. "I want you to tell Silas that you'll bring down the veil, I want you to get in the centre of your bloody expression triangle and rip a hole right through to the other side."

Shock overcomes Bonnie's hostility. "Why?" she asks. "Why would you of all people want to help Silas, Stefan said you were really mad about the witches-"

"Were you not listening witch?" Klaus snaps. "For Caroline. To bring back Caroline"

Bonnie shakes her head, her pretty faced creased and conflicted. "But we can't," she eventually says in a hoarse unsure voice. "We can't"

"We can," Klaus insists. "We have to. We can bring them back. Caroline, my brothers, your bloody hunter."

Her chest tugs and she fights hard, she doesn't want to be spirited away right now, she has to hear Klaus' plan and Bonnie's answer. She grits her teeth, she is not a puppet, a push and pull, that's what Jeremy had said and so she pushes.

She focuses on the room, on the conversation in front of her as Klaus tells Bonnie about something called the anchor, but she's fading and she doesn't catch it all. Just concentration and stubborn will aren't enough she realises, she needs something more visceral to keep her here.

Her eyes skim over Bonnie, unconsciously she considers and rejects, and land on Klaus. She focuses on him, on the determined expression on his face. On how gorgeous he is right now, he's always been gorgeous of course, but right now he is fighting for her. He's the only person on the planet who is and that makes him just about the best thing she's ever seen.

The tugging in her chest is more insistent, someone somewhere is missing her like crazy she thinks. But she can't indulge them now. She watches his moving lips, the words no longer clear as she struggles just to stay in the room, on the sexy cadence of his voice, the sharp line of his cheekbone, the green blue of his eyes.

She feels herself come back a little, his words breaking through the fog. "Well I don't bloody know do I? That's for your witchy little brain to work out."

"Why are you even doing this?" Bonnie asks, obviously annoyed. "What do you think, that you'll swoop in and save her and she'll just fall into bed with you? Forget it. Because you and Caroline, it's never gonna happen"

Klaus drops his gaze and his tongue darts over his full lower lip almost nervously. His jaw twitches and Bonnie, who always has been perceptive, draws in breath sharply and her eyes bug slightly in understanding. "Unless" she says carefully after a heart beat pause. "Unless it already did"

Klaus' mouth moves but he doesn't answer and Bonnie glances around while she processes, as if the walls hold some explanation. "Uch" she finally makes an inarticulate noise of disgust that makes her cringe in shame and snaps the original out of his silence.

"None of your concern witch," he snarls, on the offensive now. "Just find a way to anchor the other side again after we get them back."

Bonnie sighs, looking worried and slightly defeated. "Alright, I'll try."

Klaus smirks. "Good girl. And not a word to your little band of do gooders, Bonnie they'll only bugger this up"

He moves to leave and at the door he turns so his profile is to the room. "Not a word about anything," he says more softly and she knows he's talking about her infidelity. "You understand me?"

Bonnie nods and he goes just as the tugging in her chest drags her to Tyler's side, he's staring at a photo of the two of them and dragging his thumb slowly over her form. His tears flow freely down his face and there's no bourbon to be seen, his grief looks, for the first time, healthy and she's grateful for that. Grateful that Klaus can tell a lie just subtly enough, more than cruelly enough, to make him believe it.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, knowing that he'll never know the truth now. Even if Klaus succeeds and brings her back she'll never be able to confess and ease her guilt, it would be far too cruel, too selfish.

"Nik!" Rebekah's grating petulant voice comes at her from nowhere and she realises she's back in the Mikaelson mansion, the windows are dark and the fire roars and she has no way of knowing how much time has passed since she watched Tyler cry in his sun filled drawing room.

"What do you want Rebekah?" Klaus doesn't look up from his work. He's leaning back on the sofa, one foot up on the opposite knee, pad resting on his thigh. The firelight dances over his face highlighting the beauty she's wished so many times she was blind to. He doesn't look up and his fingers don't stop moving over the page.

"I want to know how long it's going to be before you admit you can't save our brothers and Elijah gives me the cure," Rebekah positions herself in front of her brother with her hands on her hips.

He doesn't answer and Rebekah huffs loudly. "Nik" she whines bratishly.

"I'm working on it," he mumbles tipping his head to study the page before him from a slightly different angle.

Rebekah fumes for a few seconds before roughly knocking the pad out of his hands in a move so reminiscent of how Jeremy and Elena used to infuriate each other that you could almost forget that these bickering siblings are a thousand years old.

"Rebekah," he growls but the younger original isn't listening she's looking at the pages that have scattered over the hardwood floor, ivory parchment contrasting classically with the aged oak.

"Nik" Rebekah whispers, the anger in her voice replaced with something like shock, or pity. She follows the blonde's eyes to look more closely at the images spread out at their feet.

Grey, on grey, on grey, a study in death. The images remind her of the old Victorian scientists' journals she'd seen in a museum when she'd been a child, a collection of small images capturing the detail of the subject; a veined hand, the corner of a mouth, a ravaged throat.

"Jesus Nik, what the hell is this?"

She tenses in anticipation of Klaus' anger but it doesn't come, instead she looks to see him lay his head back on the back of the sofa and stare at the ceiling as Rebekah begins gathering up the drawings. There are so many, he has tortured himself for page after page, as if in attempt to test his memory of every horrible detail of her demise.

"Nik," Rebekah's voice rises, shrill with fear and worry, as she shakes a fistful of crumpled pages in his face. "What the bloody hell is wrong with you? She isn't worth any of this." Rebekah tosses the drawings aside again and turns on her brother, her worry, in true Mikaelson style, making her lash out viciously. "She was just a neurotic shallow little bitch who screwed you because she was desperate for attention, she wasn't your fucking soul mate. She was nothing"

Even for a supernatural Klaus is mind blurringly fast and he is on his sister before either she or the original can register the movement. His hand closes around Rebekah's throat and he lifts her off her feet shoving her hard against the wall, cracking the plaster. "She was everything," he roars, right up in his sister's face. Savage and broken he looks with fury in the set of his jaw and tears in his crumbling eyes. "She was everything" his voice drops as he drops his sister and all she can do is watch with her incorporeal heart stuttering in her throat.

He flounders inelegantly back to the couch while Rebekah rubs her neck and watches him with dawning realization. "My god," she says almost to herself. "You actually love her?"

Klaus doesn't answer and his sister, as she comes to sit beside him, seems to take that as tacit affirmation. "That's why you lied to Tyler. Why you told the Salavatore's you'd compel Elena to flip the switch back if they don't fix it. You want her life all ready for her when she comes back."

"The life I stole from her sister," Klaus looks sideways at Rebekah and for all their scrapping and bitching she can almost see the ancient love that flows between them. "Yes, I want to give it back to her. Is that so ludicrous? That the bastard might for once try and make amends"

Rebekah's lips tighten into a tiny smile and she bumps her shoulder against Klaus'. "Not ludicrous no," she catches his eyes and looks to lighten the mood with a cheeky smirk. "Bloody damn unlikely though. What's this now, twice in a millennium? Nope that business with the Gentileschi girl back in the sixteen hundreds doesn't count"

She doesn't get the reference of course but the sibling's long history will always be full of mystery and she can't let her addled mind dwell on that right now. Right now all she can hear is Rebekah's voice scratching like a dog at the door of her understanding, "My God, you actually love her"

My God, she thinks as she kneels down among the fallen scraps of her death and wonders about the life he's trying to restore for her, a life in which he clearly sees no place for himself, he actually does.


	9. Soon now

**A/N sorry its been so long, really struggled with this chapter. IN the end just needed to plough on and get it out so i can move on. Let me know where i went wrong because i feel like i did somehow**

 **Planning**

Prom had been pretty depressing even by Mystic Falls' standards. She'd loitered around watching Elena's spite, the Salvatores' pain, and Tyler's listlessness, all set against the backdrop of the frankly laughable job the prom committee had done of realising her epic vision.

Worse still she hadn't even been able to get drunk. Bonnie and Matt had somehow been crowned Prom king and Queen but the whole thing had just felt hollow and trivial and neither had looked particularly delighted with the award.

Her prom committee deputy had said some nice things about her, which had been only faintly gratifying and even Rebekah's rather pathetic desperation to finally fit in at a high school dance hadn't offered her much amusement. So eventually she'd wandered outside just in time to witness Bonnie's confrontation with Silas. Well she'd seen Stefan again but clearly Bonnie had seen Jeremy.

"I said I'd be there didn't I?" Bonnie hisses hatefully, her pretty face twisted with anger.

"And the hybrid has the cure?"

"Why don't you ask him?" Bonnie spits.

"Bonnie." Silas/Stefan/Jeremy croons. "I'm asking you, and if you want to see me again you need to make sure everything is in place, please Bonnie"

He touches her face and for the faintest second Bonnie leans into the touch. "Ask him yourself," she hisses and she turns and strides away with her head held high. Poor brave, desperate, Bonnie.

She follows Silas to the Mikaelson mansion, goes ahead of him as he walks uninvited into the house to where Klaus stands staring solemnly into the flames of a roaring fire, the tips of his fingers pressed together and lying pensively on his full lips.

Silas enters behind her and he turns, and just for a moment his eyes light with something brilliant and hopeful. They darken quickly and the expression on Silas' face is triumphant.

"Hello lover" he says playfully and Klaus' eyes boil with anger.

"Not her" the hybrid commands in a low dangerous voice.

"Seriously? I thought you liked me this way," Silas laughs. "Your mind is admittedly difficult to read but I don't need to be psychic to know your weaknesses. Pretty aren't I, such a shame I'm so totally dead"

Klaus vamps forward until he's right up in Silas' face. "I said not her!" He roars making her jump a little at the volume of his rage.

"Ok, ok" Silas laughs again and then holds his hands out to his sides and while she still sees Stefan clearly Klaus sees something new because he nods grimly.

"So," says Silas conversationally. "My cure?"

"Checking up on me then?" Klaus' equilibrium seems restored and he smirks at the immortal.

"I think it's time you handed it over Klaus." Silas says evenly and Klaus raises both eyebrows. "I've been very patient but-"

"Look Silas," Klaus interrupts. "I understand that you are very old and imagine yourself quite the villain, but lets be clear here. You may be have a thousand years on me but while you've slept the centuries away in some God forsaken hole in the Atlantic, I've run the show." Klaus steps back and lifts his hands slightly away form his sides. "I'm not afraid of you Silas and if you'd like to test your age against my considerable experience then step up and lets have at it"

She hates to admit it but the smug self-confident son of a bitch is pretty sexy as he challenges the elder immortal with arrogant fearlessness. Silas seems to consider for a moment, weighing what he could gain by straight out defeating Klaus against the distinct possibility he might lose and clearly opts for discretion over valour.

"No need for unpleasantness," he smiles. "Our goals, as you say, align"

Klaus smirks, that cat got the cream victory smirk of his, which, while infuriating, does nothing to diminish just how hot he is right now.

"Indeed," Klaus pours himself a drink without offering Silas anything. "We're uneasy bedfellow we three, but while Bonnie holds the power, you the spell and I the cure I'm sure we can all trust each other just far enough to get this thing done"

Silas nods, "very well. Till the new moon then"

Klaus doesn't reply, he just tips his head towards the door and watches Silas leave with casual untroubled eyes. The door closes and immediately his demeanour shifts, he rubs his face and exhales deeply. She never saw this side when she was alive, the private moments when he could drop his guard and his masks of invincibility and sigh out his relief or bite his knuckle pensively as he weighs his enemies' strengths against his own.

After a moment he gathers himself and pulls out his phone. "Witch" he greets sharply. "Come to my house, it's time to finalise our plans" He hangs up quickly enough for her to know he didn't let Bonnie reply and pockets his phone. "Elijah" he bellows and his brother appears almost immediately looking as cool as always.

"Our uninvited guest?" he asks, his expression neutral.

"Silas," Klaus makes the name sound like dirt in his mouth. "It's almost time brother"

"Very well, is Miss Bennett on her way?"

"She'll be here directly," Klaus answers as he steps towards the fireplace, then he turns to his brother. "Fetch our sister back from her ridiculous Prom" he orders. "We all need to hear the witch's plan"

Elijah nods and leaves, he may wear the demeanour of the family's patriarch but it seems that in matters of war Klaus is their general. It doesn't take long for his order to be executed and Elijah returns with Rebekkah trailing after him.

"Ah sister," Klaus greets in a tone of good-natured goading. "How was your evening? A high school dream come true I trust"

"Don't be an arse Nik," Rebekah snaps. "It was just as bloody awful as you predicted, happy?"

Rebekah looks genuinely miserable and Klaus tilts his head and softens. "Anyone specifically I need to kill?" he asks stepping up to his sister and taking a gentle hold of her shoulders. "Date? Quarterback?" He smiles mischievously. "Prom queen?"

Rebekah's answering smile seems to come against her will. "All of the above" she jokes and Klaus pulls her a little closer and kisses her forehead. The moment between them is so much warmer than anything she could have imagined and she can't fight the small smile that mirrors theirs.

Bonnie arrives all business and hard determined eyes and they all sit down in silence, except the hybrid who stands before the mantle piece and bids Bonnie speak with an upturned hand and a curt. "Well witch?"

Bonnie tells them about the spell Silas has shown her to bring down the veil and the changes she's been working on to make the drop temporary.

"So Silas' immortal blood starts the spell, it anchors the otherside to him and when he takes the cure and dies the otherside dies with him. My theory is that if we spike that blood with an alternative anchor, something living, then maybe the otherside won't disintegrate, it'll latch on to the new anchor and the veil will come back up. Nothing's guaranteed but I'm pretty sure it'll work" she says sounding as confident as can expected given all the ifs and maybes in her plan.

"What do you intend to use for this anchor Miss Bennett?" Elijah asks curiously.

"Me," her friend states plainly and the matching looks of surprise on the three original's faces would be comically if she wasn't sure she was gaping too.

"Well that sounds unpleasant," Rebekah says bluntly after a few seconds of silence.

"Miss Bennett," Elijah leans forward. "That is a life sentence of pain, are you quite certain?"

"If it gets Jeremy and Caroline back then yes," Bonnie tells them determinedly. "Then I really don't have any choice, I've lost too much. I'm not losing them too, not if there's a chance to get them back"

Elijah nods and Klaus looks at her friend as with an expression of growing respect. "Very well," he says with a nod in the witch's direction. "So how do we bring them back then?"

"Its pretty simple, a little of each of your blood in the spell allows you to exists on both sides of the veil and we'll need a-"

"Let me guess" Rebekah interrupts. "A salt circle"

Bonnie looks surprised but the blonde just shrugs. "It's always a bloody salt circle."

Klaus chuckles and Bonnie frowns. "Yes," she retorts with annoyance. "A salt circle. We get them in there and we literally hold them. It won't be easy the otherside won't want to let them go."

"We're originals sweetheart," Klaus says confidently. "I don't think we'll have any trouble keeping a grip on our prizes"

"How do we find them?" Rebekah asks. "How long will we have?"

"Not long," Bonnie answers. "The balance will try to restore itself, perhaps ten minutes at the most, but don't worry they should find us."

Klaus looks questioningly at Bonnie and her friend explains. "Jeremy told me how the otherside works, how the living influence the dead. Basically when you're thinking about someone on the otherside, and really feeling it, then they find their way to you. Odds are that they're all right here right now watching us, they'll know the plan and hopefully they'll be there."

She looks around stupidly as if she'll suddenly see Jeremy standing with Kol and Finn in the doorway, its more than a little creepy to think that they might all be their watching.

She's drawn from her thoughts when her eyes land on Klaus, he's glowering at the floor his early confidence evaporated and his body suddenly brimming with tension. Elijah notices too. "Brother?" he questions sharply.

Klaus looks up and his eyes are troubled, anger rising up through something far more vulnerable. "Mikael" he hisses. "If what Bonnie says is correct we can safely assume that our malevolent parents will be no less aware of our plans than those we seek to save"

"Bugger" Rebekah blows out air nervously through her nose.

"I'll kill him," Klaus declares, lifting his gaze defiantly to meet the empty air. "Do you hear me father?" he snarls. "I'll kill you all over again if you try to thwart us"

"Esther is no lesser threat," Elijah looks worried, it's a sad state of affairs for these three siblings that any reunion with their parents will basically be a fight for their lives. She's not saying her relationship with her dad was exactly stellar at the end but this is a different league of messed up.

"I can stop Esther," Bonnie declares. "But you'll have to get Jeremy"

"You really believe you can match our mother?" Klaus asks, eyes narrowed and calculatingly.

"I'm more juiced up right now than when I took you down," Bonnie says challengingly. "So what do you think?"

Her goading actually seems to please him and he grins wickedly at her. "Well then I pity our witch of a mother. Rebekah you will hold Jeremy and Caroline, Elijah hold fast to our brothers. Bonnie and I will defend the circle until the balance rights itself."

"And Silas?" Elijah asks

"He doesn't trust us," Bonnie states and Rebekah snorts.

"Obviously." She sneers. "Come on Nik, you're the paranoid one, tell us how Silas will react"

Klaus gives his sister a chiding look but answers anyway. "He won't want to take the cure until he's certain Bonnie's spell is working, that buys us a little time but you two," he indicates his siblings. "Keep out of sight or he'll smell the proverbial rat. Bonnie and I will play our parts, the grieving desperate lovers, Silas is himself a fool enough for love that he'll buy our willingness to sacrifice everything for them so long as we sell it right"

Bonnie nods in grim agreement and she imagines Silas will buy it simply because it's true. She has little doubt that Bonnie would have torn apart the otherside for Jeremy with or without this plan to restore it, there is a wildness to her grief that teeters on the edge of madness and burns, only slightly more contained, in the hybrid's cold eyes.

"Remember" Bonnie adds ominously. "When the veil comes back up it will try to trap the living on one side and the dead on the other. The spell means you'll be neither, if you're not in the circle you'll be trapped on the otherside"

A few more words and they disperse, their plans made and only two nights until the new moon when they'll either save the day of destroy the world. Klaus sits before the fire watching the flames pensively until his brother returns and pours a drink. "You are troubled brother," he states and holds out the glass of whiskey. "Speak," he commands and she thinks there is no secret Klaus could keep from him in this moment.

"We cannot fail Elijah, too much is at stake," Klaus replies. "And if our father has stood beside us through all our planning and waits on the otherside to thwart us, to trap us with him there no less, then it will have been my weakness that is the cause of it, my fear" he throws back the amber liquid in one gulp and looks at his brother with wet eyes.

Elijah gazes thoughtfully at his brother for a few seconds before he speaks. "I have heard it said that fear is merely wisdom in the face of danger, and that courage is action in the face of fear," he tells his brother calmly. "You have never in all the centuries failed to act Niklaus. And it is your actions now, your willingness to fight for our brothers and to undo the wrong you have done Miss Forbes, that have brought us here."

Klaus' lips move as if to reply but Elijah speaks first. "This cure could have ripped our family apart and yet here we three stand, a family united once more." Elijah clamps a hand on Klaus shoulder and keeps his eyes focused on the hybrid. "And as a family united we will face our parents and we will bring back those we have lost"

"Here bloody here" Rebekah is smiling a warm crooked smile as she steps between her brothers and holds up a hand for each of them to take. "Always and forever remember?"

A tear shines on the banks of Klaus' eye but doesn't fall as he and Elijah echo their ancient family vow. After a moment he squeezes Elijah's shoulder and places a kiss on Rebekah's waiting cheek. "Goodnight," he says tenderly. "Little sister"

He makes for the stairs and she follows him just to see a little more of the man behind the myth he's created of himself. They pass through the now familiar clutter of his studio and into his bedroom, and even though she's a ghost and its ridiculous she feels a little flutter of nervousness as she watches him stand before his bed.

He reaches over his shoulder and pulls his t-shirt off one handed in that way guys do but girls can't seem to manage and her eyes graze up and down his athletic frame for a second before he turns and sits shirtless on the bed. She should go she thinks, she should at least turn away, because Klaus Mikaleson his half naked in front of her, all pale skin over sinewy muscle and tantalizing black ink and she is being magnificently creepy just standing there all incorporeal and invisible and watching him get undressed.

She doesn't go, she watches as he leans forward with a barely audible sigh and removes his shoes and socks. There is something human and vulnerable about him barefoot that contrast starkly with every powerful terrible thing she knows him to be. He looks like just a guy, just your average incredibly hot guy in low-slung jeans, his hair a little tousled and his eyes a little sad.

He lies back on the luxurious dark duvet and tucks one hand behind his head, the other arm falls across his body drawing her eye down it's length from the flight of the birds breaking free across his shoulder to where his hand lies on his taught stomach, fingertips just brushing the definition of his hips. God he's a sight, she's half glad, half sorry she has no body right now because she's always been admittedly a little over sexed and she knows just looking at him would have every nerve ending tingling.

Her mind is languishingly firmly in the gutter when he turns onto his side and seems to look straight at her. "Won't be long now sweetheart," he tells the empty space in front of him that he couldn't know she occupies. Then he closes his eyes and when she's sure he's asleep, although why it matters in her current state she's not sure, she steps forward and lies down in the narrow space beside him to look into his face. He's so boyish and just plain pretty when he sleeps that she finds herself reaching to touch him with ghost fingers that don't make him stir and don't tingle with the heat of his skin.

"Yeah" she whispers almost to herself. "See you soon I guess"


	10. And to fruition

**And to fruition**

She's so nervous that she can barely breath, which obviously isn't a problem right now, but - she glances at the darkening sky - will hopefully be an issue before the night is out.

She's spent the last couple of days terrified that she'd pop out of existence only to re-emerge and realize she'd missed it: Missed the new-moon and along with it Bonnie's spell and the fall of the veil and her one chance to get out of this tedious hell.

She's been concentrating on Klaus, clinging with all her might to him. To how she hates him and fancies him and just how much she want's to thank him for all of this. She's certain he's doing the same for her, trying to hold her close by force of will, trying to blot out Mikael. All in all it's been working, she's been pretty much constantly at his side, not withstanding a brief spell at Tyler's when she'd dropped her focus, or Klaus had.

She'd been in such a panic, so unfairly angry with her boyfriend when she'd materialized in his bathroom. Seeing him in the shower his broad tan back slick with water and suds had made her growl in annoyance. "Shit" she'd shouted loudly and turned away. Whatever Tyler wanted with her in the shower, and she's not speculating at the moment because she can't decided if jerking off over your dead girlfriend is romantic or creepy, was really not important.

"Shit shit shit" she'd hissed and run her hands through her hair. Klaus, she'd thought, think about Klaus. She'd conjured images of him, all the sweet things she'd seen of him with his family, all the fierce loyalty she'd watched since she died, all the things she could like about him if there wasn't just so much to hate.

His sleeping face comes to her mind, she'd watched him for hours that night after he'd confessed his fear to his brother and she can't say that something hadn't shaken a little loose in her heart. With a rush she'd been back with him and she hasn't let him go since.

"Bonnie," the hybrid greets as they emerge into a clearing in the centre of the expression triangle, where Bonnie lays out a circle in salt.

"Klaus" Bonnie replies without looking up. "Everything ready?"

"Yes. Silas?"

"Not here yet"

"Well that's a little slack I must say," Klaus gripes. "You'd think after waiting a couple of millennia he'd be a bit more bloody keen"

Bonnie doesn't acknowledge the original as she retrieves a parchment from her bag and lays it alongside a small collection of creepy magical paraphernalia laid out on the earth.

Silas enters the clearing a few moments later and Klaus turns to him with elaborate bon hommie. "Silas" he greets almost jovially. "Nice face, I've always had a soft spot for the young Salvatore. Perhaps before we finally shuffle you off this mortal coil we'll get a glimpse of your real one."

Silas grins Stephan's broad rueful grin and she feels like she's in on a private joke with him when he says. "Perhaps."

"We're ready," Bonnie interjects, her dark shaky tone contrasting starkly with the affectations of the two immortals, each determined to show the other an un-troubled façade. "Lets get on with this"

"Excellent." Silas turns to Klaus. "The cure"

The hybrid pulls he small vial from his jacket and holds it out, snatching it away just before Silas can take it. "Double cross me Silas," he growls all fake good will evaporated. "And I will find a way to make you pay"

"Don't worry, you'll see your precious Caroline again very soon" Silas answers and holds his hand out for the cure. "I swear"

Klaus lays the vial in Silas' hand. The immortal takes it reverently and kneels besides Bonnie and, as the witch begins to chant, takes a dagger and cuts his own hand so his blood falls thick and scarlet into the flat pottery bowl.

"I bloody hate witches," Klaus grumbles to himself drawing Silas' irritated gaze. "No offence" Klaus smirks and while he distracts the immortal Bonnie quickly pours the contents of her own small vial into the bowl.

A few more minutes of chanting and she feels Bonnie's power and the tainted power of the expression triangle begin to shake the walls of the otherside. Feeling begins to return in flashes so intense she can barely breathe the few gulps of air she can snatch each time.

"Klaus" she calls when she feels the cool night air hit her skin again and he looks straight at her.

"Caroline"

The world falls away again and she sees his eyes grow wide with panic and his voice rises. "Caroline" he shouts, "Caroline"

Another second and she's back again, the world feels cold and harsh and exhilarating compared with the otherside and she laughs wildly. "Klaus, oh my God"

He grins and moves towards her just as the veil starts strobing her in and out of existence making her feel nauseous. And then she feels it, in every flash in which the veil holds, she feels the familiar tugging in her chest. "No" she screams and Klaus tries to reach for her just as she vanishes.

Elena is on her knees sobbing with Stefan and Damon looking on helplessly when she materializes into a rapidly solidifying reality. "Oh god" Elena cries. "Caroline died, she died and I didn't even care."

She feels for her friend, she truly does but she can't help the curse that comes out of her mouth at the timing of this outpouring of regret. "Shit"

They all turn to look at her, mouths dropping open in shock. "Caroline?" Stefan asks with wonder and disbelief in his voice and she smiles briefly before she turns and vamps away as fast as she can.

In the forest she hears Klaus calling for her and heads towards the sound. In the distance she can hear Damon and Stefan shouting her name too but they don't matter, only Klaus and the salvation he represents matters.

"Klaus," she cries in relief when they come face to face. "Thank god!"

He takes a step towards her but then he stops and blood bubbles from his lips behind him Finn Mikaelson reaches a murderous hand into his brother's back to wrap around his heart.

"No" she cries.

"I'm sorry brother," Finn says with little regret.

"Finn," Klaus chokes.

"You won't be saving me today Niklaus, nor that miscreant; Kol. For once your intentions may be benign but if we trap you three here then all your evil ends tonight."

His grip tightens on Klaus' heart and they fall together to their knees Klaus eyes, filled with pain and anguish, find hers and she's suddenly snapped from her immobility. She vamp speeds past the pair and as she spins her hands take hold of either side of Finns head snapping his neck in a lightening fast move.

Klaus topples to the ground at here feet and she squats down to try and right him. "Come one Klaus," she barks. "Get up we gotta go"

"Run Caroline" he groans and drops on to all fours coughing roughly.

She curses under her breath at the gaping hole in his back, it looks sickeningly like Finn had the hybrid's heart halfway out of his body before she stopped him. The veil could come back up at any minute and they're not going to make it with him like this. "Klaus" she turns him to face her and proffers her wrist. "Quickly take my blood we really have to move"

"No Caroline," he turns his head away. "Just run. Rebekah can-"

"No! God I'm not leaving you." She growls. "Just drink already"

He shakes his head stubbornly. "I'm poison Caroline"

All of the anger wooshes from her body and that self-loathing utterance and she tips her head and moves so she can catch his eye. "Yes" she says softly and lifts his wrist to her lips allowing her fangs to show. "And you're the cure"

Her fangs gentle pierce the skin and his ancient blood spills over her tongue tasting like power and magic and eons of history. A second later she feels his fangs break through her veins and her blood passes her own magic back to him as they form a circle of poison and healing.

She breaks away before he does, she needs him strong to get them both out of here and when he looks up from her wrist into her eyes his are filled with bewildered gratitude. "Thank you" he murmurs.

"Niklaus," she rears away from the connection of their eyes as his darken at the sneering interruption. "I can't say I'm surprised to find the bastard groveling at the feet of a woman"

She stands as she turns and, gathering all her courage, hisses. "Leave us alone"

"She speaks for you Niklaus." Mikael sneers, hate rolling off him like a putrid breeze. "Will she fight your battles too boy?"

"Enough, father!" Klaus stands and comes to position himself slightly in front of her, his body placed protectively between her and his father. "Run Caroline, I'll kill the old fool again". His words are all bravado, she feels his fear like that of a cornered beast before her, lashing out with snarls and gnashing teeth, longing to flee.

"Pathetic," Mikael's voice is taunting and malicious. "How you fawn over this girl, a mere child who loathes you for the filth you are"

Klaus' eyes flash almost imperceptibly to the floor at his father's abuse and she feels a surge of something protective. "I'm not leaving you," she insists.

"She is brave Niklaus, perhaps if you had half her courage you'd stand a chance against me," Klaus growls but the elder original ignores it and continues to taunt him. "But you're weak Niklaus, you've always been weak. For women, for your precious siblings. Weak for those who know better than to love a cur like you"

She feels Klaus almost physically stutter at the verbal assault his body vibrates half with anger and half with something older, something frightened and small. She can't fight Mikael but he can, or at least he could if he can shake off that debilitating fear.

An idea strikes her and she steps forward so her shoulder is next to his. "Well as touching as this family reunion is we're going to be going now. Enjoy the rest of eternity rotting here"

"Very brave or very foolish" Mikael snarls.

She shrugs. "Neither, just confident." Mikael looks momentarily confused. "Its easy to be brave when the most powerful creature on the planet has your back." She states and feels Klaus straighten fractionally beside her. Hhe needs this, she thinks, needs someone to stand up for him against his father, someone to remind him of what Mikael's mere presence seems to have made him forget. That he is the one with the power.

"The bastard?" Mikael laughs cruelly. "He's nothing but a sniveling beast that deserves to be put down"

"Your wrong" she insists forcing herself to be calm, to project complete conviction. "He's going to beat you Mikael. Because he's fighting for something other than hate. He's literally moving heaven and earth for me and for his brothers. He's not just stronger than you Mikael" she pauses and lifts her head haughtily. "He's better than you"

Mikael's face contorts with anger and he launches himself straight at her giving her a second to regret being so impulsive as he raises a stake. And then he's flying away from her and Klaus glances at her with burning yellow eyes before hurling himself unarmed at his father, fangs bared and a savage growl in his throat.

The fight is a blur of vampire speed and wolf savagery, Klaus wraps himself around the larger man and tears at his throat with his fangs. Werewolf venom, and boy she remembers how toxic it is, immediately working to weaken the vampire. Mikael thrusts his stake through Klaus' chest but it isn't white oak and Klaus merely grins as he pulls it out and hurls it at his father penetrating his shoulder and spinning him round.

Eventually Klaus uses his speed against the weakening vampire and gets behind his father snapping his neck with a satisfying crunch. Klaus stands over the lifeless body looking shaken and slightly bewildered, as though he isn't' clear on how he got there.

"Klaus," she grabs his hand and starts running them full vamp speed back to the clearing, and Bonnie, and the salt circle that's their ticket home.

From inside its safety she can survey the scene. Esther lies on the ground with her throat ruined and scarlet, around her witches that she recognises as the coven Silas sacrificed lie with their heads and limbs at odd angles.

Silas is lying on the ground at Bonnie's feet a few meters outside the circle bleeding out his brief mortal life while her friend watches him with ice-cold eyes.

Beside her Rebekah holds a disorientated looking Jeremy tight against her body and Kol and Elijah clasp each other's forearms. They're all bloodied and battered and she realises that she and Klaus actually got off lightly.

Silas dies and the veil begins to whirl around them in violent gusts, like a spinning tornado trying to lift them away. Klaus grabs her other hand so they're facing each other as Bonnie cries out in agony and the otherside anchors itself to her. She screams too, and so does Jeremy and Kol grunts in pain as the wild swirling of the otherside becomes more and more violent. She feels like she's being torn in two, Klaus on one side and all the magic of the otherside on the other.

"Hold on" she hears the hybrid shout over the rushing wind. "Hold them"

His grip tightens on her hands even as she feels hers on him weaken. "Please" she screams. Please don't let go, she thinks.

He doesn't and after what feels like hours but is probably less than a minute the rushing wind and the agonising pain subside.

Silence falls on the woods like a crisp billowing sheet falling gently over a bed and they all stand and look at one another, eventually it's Kol that shatter's the crystal calm. "We're back darlings" he says with a grin and just like that it's real.

It's suddenly wonderfully real and laughter bubbles like joy out of her throat as she watches Bonnie throw herself into Jeremy's arms and he buries his face in her hair and they breathe each other in in joyful desperate gasps.

"Kol!" Rebekah grabs her brother and Elijah too pulling the three of them into an awkward embrace.

The whole strange scene, the chill air on her skin, and the hot hands clasped in her own, all this wonderful, living, sensation makes her giddy. She turns back to Klaus to find him watching his siblings and breathing hard.

"We did it," Rebekah gushes excitedly and Klaus grins at his sister and turns back to face her, expression immediately turning soft and serious.

"You did it" she echoes in a whisper, her voice surprising her with its hoarseness, and throws herself without reserve into the connection of their eyes so that they're just standing there looking at each other then he grins and her face splits in response.

Suddenly she's struck by the urge to throw herself exuberantly into his arms, her muscles coil in readiness just as Stefan's anxious shout hits her ears. "Caroline?"

She stops like she's hit a brick wall.

"Care?" Elena's voice echoes Stefan. "Care are you there?"

She gives him an awkward rueful smile that he returns as she steps away feeling like a bitch for needing to put distance between them before her friends get there.

"Care," Elena bursts into view. "Oh my god Jeremy?"

Then suddenly arms are around her, strong and as familiar as the smell of his gaudy cologne. "Oh God Care, oh my god is this real?" Tyler's voice is cracking with emotion and she can tell without seeing his face that he's crying and then she's crying too and she clings to him with all her returning strength and looks over his shoulder to find Klaus gone. The originals have melted away like ghosts in the night and she's left holding her boyfriend and staring out into the darkness with a thank you lost behind her lips.

They all go to the boarding house, it's a blur, everyone is shocked and overjoyed but kinda crazy too and the questions are coming thick and fast, making her head spin and her mouth dry.

Liz comes and her mother's arms around her are the best thing she's ever felt. "It's ok Mom," she says firmly because Liz just can't stop crying. "I'm back and I'm ok, I promise"

"How?" her mother asks and its time for the explanations she's dreading.

Bonnie tells the story, spins it so that the originals were all about Kol and Finn and that she herself bargained for Caroline and Jeremy. She's grateful to Bonnie but a creeping sense of disloyalty accompanies the witch's account, because she didn't thank him.

He saved her, she can touch and feel and be bombarded by this world because he took a chance, he risked literally everything to save her and she didn't thank him. She didn't wrap her arms around him and cling to him and thank you thank you thank you.

Her friends' voices jar inside her head, the warmth of the fire scorches painfully against her skin. Being alive again is a sort of torture, painful and giddy and wonderful and she didn't thank him, can't even speak up for him now and say. "He saved me", how weak she feels.

"Bonnie working with Klaus was something to watch. They bickered constantly," Jeremy says, his name drawing her out of the rising shrillness of her own thoughts. "It was like kindergarten"

"Hey," Bonnie punches him playfully, they're all wired and manic and exhilarated right now. "That is the crack team that brought you both back from the dead so don't criticise"

Jeremy throws his arm around Bonnie and it's incredibly to see her friend look so happy after all the pain she's been through.

Beside Elena, who is leaning against his side and smiling, actually smiling, Damon snorts and raises his glass sardonically. "Team Bonnie and Klaus then" he toasts making everyone giggle.

She laughs too and lifts her glass with a grin. "Bonnie and Klaus," she echoes brightly glad to say his name, credit where it's due she thinks and Klaus should be getting all the credit for this. She feels Tyler tense beside her at the sound of the hybrids name and keeps her eyes off him as the conversation moves on.

Before midnight fatigue settles on her like a heavy blanket and she yawns noisily. "Tired?" Tyler asks and she nods.

"Surprisingly yes considering I've done nothing for weeks." She glances between him and her mother, "Ty," she says softly. "Do you mind if I just go home with my mom tonight"

Tyler looks surprised and a bit hurt but he nods understandingly. "Of course not babe."

"Thanks," she kisses him gratefully, pours all her love for him into it. "I love you"

"I love you too"

"Breakfast tomorrow?" she offers with a sweet smile. "Your place, first thing?"

He smiles back. "Definitely and I promise it will be epic"

"Oooh pancakes?"

"The works" he assures her.

Her mother makes her coco and sits on her bed just like when she was a little girl. They've both stopped crying but Liz's eyes are still wet when she takes the empty cup and kisses her goodnight.

By two am she still hasn't slept a wink despite the exhaustion that seems to have penetrated every square inch of her body. The dark shapes of her room feel strangely alien and the night presses down against her lungs making her feel claustrophobic.

She's happy, can't say how happy, to be alive but the world is full of sensations she's been living without for months, full of grating sounds and assaulting smells. Everything is somehow new and strange and she longs for something familiar.

Eventually she slips silently out of bed, pulls a baggy school sweatshirt on over her tank top and shoves her feet into the battered old pair of uggs that live under her bed.

Most of the windows of the mansion are dark when she arrives, excepting a couple on the ground floor and a soft light from the French doors of his studio. One effortless leap and she lands with cat like stealth on the small Juliet balcony before the slightly open doors.

The darkness of his room feels safe and comfortingly familiar as she steps through the door. He's lying on his front, bare back pale in the moonlight that falls across his bed, one arm under his head the other flung languidly across the space beside him.

God, she think's, what is she doing here, in his bedroom like a stalker? She'd felt in the unrealness of the quietest part of the night that it was a good idea to come. To thank him for saving her and to find solace in this place where she's spent so much of her time on the otherside. But seriously what was she thinking, what the hell did she think she'd say?

She turns to leave and as she does her sleeve brushes lightly against the door frame giving off a barely audible rustle and the hybrid, in one fluid and devastatingly fast motion, leans over, grasps a stake from his bedside table and hurls it at her.

She moves just in time, jerks just enough to her left so that the wood buries itself in the plaster. "Jesus" she breathes hard and fast as he sits up and focuses on her with confused expression.

"Caroline?"

"Yes jees," her fright makes her snap. "God you're uptight"

"Well what the bloody hell do you expect if you ambush me in my bedroom" he's in front of her in a flash hands hovering inches over her body as if he wants to check for damage. Eventually he cups her face roughly. "I could have killed you," he snarls. "With no way this time to restore you, what idiocy could possibly motivate you to-"

"Sneak up on a paranoid sleeping hybrid?" she cuts in voice laden with black humour.

"Precisely!" He barks and she can see the fear in his eyes that drives this anger, fear for her.

He hasn't released her face so she brings her hands up to hold his wrists gently, her thumb skating briefly over the backs of his hands. "I'm sorry ok," she smiles a conciliatory smile. "I'll be sure to knock loudly next time"

He relaxes and smirks eyes sparkling, almost blackly in the low light. "Next time you visit my bedroom in the middle of the night?"

She rolls her eyes but she can't keep a small smile from tugging at her lips.

"What are you doing here love?" he asks as he releases his gentle hold on her face. "Not that you're not welcome"

"I wanted to thank you," she replies and from his skeptical look she can tell that half-truth won't satisfy him.

"And this gratitude couldn't wait until morning?" he asks, his eyebrow tilting questioningly.

"Couldn't sleep, being back is great and all but also majorly weird." She shrugs, she's here she may as well be honest. "I guess I was looking for somewhere familiar and since I've spent most of my death here because the otherside is freaky and decided I should be pretty much your puppet"

"My apologies Caroline it was not my intention to-"

"I know," she assures him sincerely, then a yawn burst noisily from her mouth. "God I'm so tired and I couldn't settle so I thought..." she glances over at the bed and trails off feeling presumptuous and stupid.

"Of course, sweetheart, whatever you need." He takes her elbow and leads her to his bed, drawing back the cover so she can slip inside. He squats down beside the bed and looks into her eyes, "Sleep well Caroline"

When he moves to stand she grasps his hand and with her eyes begs him to understand, to accept, to accommodate and not to question. She knows he's capable of all of that, at least he is with her and she can't explain any of this.

He doesn't disappoint he slips in behind her and, impulsively, she reaches behind her and finds his arm, pulling it over her waist. "God you stink" she grumbles when his breath hits her nostrils.

"Sorry love," he mumbles. "Kol's idea of a welcome home involved drinking enough to inebriate and the entire population on Mystic Falls"

"You smell like it. Just don't breathe on me ok." She demands as she snuggles deeper into the expensive cotton. Its so comfy and she feels so safe and warm with the weight of his arm on her waist and tickle of his chuckling breath on the back of her neck.

"Yes my queen"

"Klaus," she says tentatively after a moment's silence. "Will you be a gentleman and pretend not to hear me sneak out in the morning?"

He sighs almost inaudibly and she feels like a bitch for using him like this but then his arm tightens fractionally around her and his lips press one chaste kiss into her hair. "Whatever you want love" and she sleeps.


	11. Morning Stories

**Morning stories**

"Well, well, well, and what do we have here?"

She stops in the doorway and turns. "Rebekah" she sighs feeling resigned to whatever taunting the youngest Original has in store for her.

"A former Miss Mystic Falls sneaking out of my brother's bedroom before dawn," Rebekah looks delightedly mischievous. "Scandalous"

"It's not what it looks like ok," she says and when the blonde raises an eyebrow she clarifies. "I didn't have sex with him."

"Oh I know that," Rebekah dismisses with a wave of her manicured hand. "Or I'd have been kept up all night listening to you screaming his name. Women always do with Nik."

She's ignores the sudden flush she feels at the reminder and is readying herself to make some dismissive retort when she sees something playfully malicious touch Rebekah's eyes and the blonde speaks first. "But then you know all about that don't you?"

She closes her eyes in frustration, she'd forgotten that Rebekah knows about her indiscretion with her big brother. "I'm not having this conversation, I have to go"

As she leaves the house Rebekah falls into step beside her and resumes talking. "I'll walk you, we should chat"

"Seriously? Why?"

"Because" Rebekah answers thoughtfully as they make their way down the mansion's impressive drive. "If you'd just been here for a shag that would have made sense but you're sneaking into Nik's room for what, companionship, solace? That's far more intriguing"

"God, I came to say thank you ok?" she really just wants to get away from Rebekah now and forget his awkward encounter ever happened. "I was tired so I fell asleep. No big deal"

"Hmmm," the blonde hums. "Well I suppose thanks were in order, Nik risked a hell of a lot to get you back"

"I know" her voice comes out far softer than she intended and the tinge of wonder in it isn't lost on Rebekah who's own expression softens.

She thinks about what he risked and she knows it wasn't going against Silas, or the chance of being trapped on the other side that his sister is talking about. She'll never be able to ask Klaus about it so perhaps seeing Rebekah this morning might hold an opportunity after all.

"Rebekah?" she says carefully. "Can I ask you something?"

The original makes an unbothered face, which she takes as an invitation to speak.

"Mikael?" she makes that hated name a question.

"Ah?" she can tell this isn't what Rebekah expected and yet the blonde seems to understand. "Ok, ask away"

"So Klaus is the baddest of the bad, right? Most powerful creature on the planet, laughs in the face of danger blah, blah, blah"

Rebekah looks disdainful. "So he'd have us believe"

"But he didn't laugh in the face of Mikael." She shakes her head, this has been buzzing around in her mind since she got back. As she'd lain awake last night in her own bed, she'd thought of how rigid he'd been with fear, how he'd faltered under his father's abusive words. "I never thought I'd see him scared of anything, but," She pauses; it feels raw to say this out loud, personal somehow. "He was so afraid Rebekah, I could feel it."

Rebekah looks at her with sharp appraising eyes for a moment. "Some things just run too deep I suppose," she says eventually. "I don't generally share my brother's secrets but as he does seem so inexplicably fond of you I'll tell you

"Mikael was cruel and violent with all of us," Rebekah says her eyes on the road as they walk. "But he was especially vindictive with Niklaus. Whatever happened, whatever went wrong it was always somehow Nik's fault. I don't remember a time when we were children that he wasn't black and blue."

They pass a bench in the town square and Rebekah sits down, staring into space, eyes looking far into the past, shuttered and unknowable. She sits too as the original continues. "He was just a child and Mikael would beat him so hard I was often afraid he would die."

Her heart tightens with compassion and she tries to picture Klaus as a beaten frightened child. It's not as difficult as she'd have imagined, she has, she realises now, seen the shadows of it in his eyes.

"Do you think he knew?" she asks, searching for a reason for such cruelty. "That Klaus wasn't his?"

Rebekah looks at her for a moment still unnaturally cool considering the subject. "No" she says eventually. "I think he just hated him.

"Mikael was a brute," Rebekah explains and finally emotion touches her eyes. "He wanted a warrior and he got an artist." Her expression turns fond. "When we were little Nik would carve these tiny figurines for me out of maple. Father would beat him horribly for it. I begged him to stop," a smile flickers over Rebekah's red lips. "But he knew I loved them so he never did."

She can feel a frown deep between her brows; it's so strange to hear Rebekah talk about her brother like this when they're so often at each other's throats. The original notices and snorts. "Make no mistake Caroline, Klaus have given me plenty of reasons over the centuries to hate him but there are times when he's the brightest thing in my life."

Rebekah stands suddenly her movements a little jerky, embarrassed, like she's said too much, she probably has. "Right," the blonde says her tone turning catty and defensive. "You should shower, you'll want to wash off the smell of my brother's bed before you see your boyfriend."

That makes her cringe inside. God she hasn't even thought of Tyler, she's been so lost in Rebekah's tale and before that, if she's honest, so lost in Klaus' arms. "Thanks for the advice" she retorts and turns to go.

"And Caroline," Rebekah's voice is chilling as it stops her and she turns with a prickle of fear to look at the original. "Nik isn't as tough as he makes out, so don't toy with him," it's unmistakably an order and she's more than willing to acquiesce without the threat that follows. "Because if you hurt him I'll make sure they can't find all the pieces when they bury you"

She scrubs extra hard in the shower and layers on lotions and perfume. If Tyler caught the faintest whiff of his sire on her she knows he'd completely lose it, she'd sensed the tension in him last night at the mere mention of the original and she's afraid of where his hatred might lead. Her best recourse, she decides as she approaches Tyler's house, is to keep his mind off Klaus.

Tyler has gone to town on the breakfast; the smell of pancakes, coffee, and most enticingly, bacon, draws her to the kitchen where he's bouncing around in the bright morning sunshine.

He kisses her and spins her round and she laughs like a child in the glow of his enthusiasm. It's a perfect morning filled with laughter and lingering kisses and so much love between them that she thinks he must surely be her other half.

Except, that when they sit together on the sofa and lose themselves in endless kisses her mind wanders. She thinks of Klaus, and of Rebekah's story, of an abuse that started a millennium ago and has hounded him literally and emotionally for centuries. He's the very definition of damaged goods and that should make her more wary than ever but instead it makes her hurt inside for him and makes her arms, even as they wrap around Tyler, ache to comfort him.

They make plans to meet the gang for lunch at the grill and she leaves ahead of Tyler wanting to check in with her mom the way. But her mother is AWOL and she ends up getting there first.

At the bar Kol and Klaus Mikaelson are talking and languidly sipping neat scotch. God he looks good, why does he always have to look so good? The thin material of his Henley clings to the lean lines of his body like a lover and she can imagine the heat of him from across the room, that unnatural werewolf heat that contrasts so starkly with the own unnatural coolness. His lips form a smile around the rim of his glass and Jesus she's still just standing there like a freak watching him.

"Caroline," Kol greets bombastically and raises his glass to her. "My fellow survivour"

She walks over to the pair, tensely avoiding looking at Klaus. The intimacy of the night before bangs about in her head making it impossible to face him. "You'll have a drink with us darling?" Kol tips his head to his brother. "Nik's buying"

Now she has to look at him, but where she thought there would be an awkward intensity there is just an eye roll and a feigned reluctant sigh. "So it seems," he says easily and smirks at her. "My brother is determined to drink the whole town dry before he finally sleeps, you may as well get some before it's all gone"

Kol just lifts his glass in a tipsy toast and she shakes her head in amused resignation. "Ok"

After a moment Klaus gives her a questioning look.

"Wait," she smiles a sugary smile. "I'm deciding what's the most expensive."

He laughs and when their eyes meet they dance with something warmer than simple shared mirth. "It's decided then." Kol interjects. "Champagne cocktails. We are celebrating after all, Nik get your wallet out"

She's on her third when the others arrive laughing at Kol, who is flirting outrageously with one of her cheer squad, and leaning, she realises only in the reflection of their surprised expressions, a little too close to the original at her side.

She steps away jerkily, feeling as if she's been caught with her hand in a hybrid shaped cookie jar. Mercifully Tyler isn't with them and whatever snide remarks were forming on Damon's lips are driven away by a sudden greater concern.

"Sweet Elena," Kol croons and the air crackles with something ominous. "And Jeremy my old mate. I've been looking forward to catching up with you two"

Damon moves slightly in front of Elena, instinctively protective and Bonnie does the same for Jeremy, the Gilberts do inspire such devotion.

"Time to go Kol," Klaus says calmly and Stefan's eyes flash gratefully to the hybrid.

"Nik, don't be a buzz kill," Kol leers threateningly at Elena who visibly shrinks away from the sadistic glint in his eyes. "If the beautiful Caroline can make peace with her murderer I'm sure I can do the same with mine."

Klaus' eyes skim across her face skittishly and his mouth opens a little then snaps shut. She wants to reach for him then, to tell him it's ok, that she gets it. She knows he lashed out, the way he does all hurt and impulsive and that he never meant for it to go that far. And that he saved her and she forgives him. But everyone is here and she can't get the words out of her mouth.

"Enough Kol," he growls and his tone is so dark that a chill runs up her spine.

"Seems I hit a nerve brother?" Kol quips but he's not stupid enough to push Klaus right now so he huffs theatrically, pulls the cheerleader to his side and acquiesces. "Ok let's move this party"

Klaus' eyes flash briefly to hers and she fancies they are laden with something heavy and troubled, then he's leaving and she wants to call out to him but doesn't know what she'd say.

"Kol," she calls instead and when both brothers look at her its Klaus she favours with a smirk. "Don't eat her ok, she's the top of the pyramid."

Fortunately Tyler is late and by the time he arrives she has already managed to deflect Damon's questions about her being. "So cosy with the brother's grim" as he put it. Bonnie steps in, and Jeremy too so smoothly that she realises he must know about her and Klaus as well, and between them they move the conversation to safer ground.

But her stomach is still churning when Tyler arrives and she feels like she dodged a bullet. She determines she can't take the chance again. Decides, with more than a tinge of reluctance, that tomorrow she'll tell Klaus to stay away.

Tomorrow comes with a jaunty golden sun and a warm breeze that caresses the bare skin of her arms as she makes her way to the mansion. On the steps a burly man carrying a large box brushes past her and loads the box into the truck that stands outside. She rushes inside and up the stairs.

"Be careful with that," she hears him bark and follows his voice to his studio where other men are packing canvases into crates.

"Klaus?" she questions drawing his eyes to her. "What's going on?"

"Caroline? Wh-" his next words are cut off by the clatter of a toppled easel and Klaus again turns on the men. "I said be bloody careful."

"Klaus what's going on?" she repeats trailing after him as he intercepts a gawky youth who's just picking up a bronze statue.

"I'll pack that mate," he tells the boy. "It's even older than I am"

"Klaus just stop," her voice rises, momentarily drawing a few looks from what she's realised are removal men before a glower from the hybrid sends them all scurrying.

"Sweetheart-" he begins but she cuts him off.

"You're leaving?" she's aware she sounds a little shrill. "Were you going to tell me? Where are you even going?"

The gawky boy is watching them with interest and she imagines she must look like the crazy girl he's having to moving house to escape but she can't help it, she's utterly blindsided by this.

"New Orleans" he says and gestures with an open hand for her to go ahead of him into his bedroom and away from prying eyes.

"What? Why?"

"During my hunt for a way to bring you back I contacted a coven in the French Quarter with whom I've long had an understanding." He walks over to the window and looks out. "They informed me of a great betrayal"

"Ominous and melodramatic Klaus, but not really explaining anything"

"When my siblings and I arrived in New Orleans three hundred years ago it was little more than a port in a swamp. My family built that city and it was our home for two hundred years." He makes his way over to the decanter on a table in the corner, and seriously what sort of alcoholic has whiskey on hand in their bedroom?

"Ok?" she prompts as he hands her a glass.

"It was one of the few times my family has been truly happy, in no small part thanks to the presence in our lives of my ward Marcellus Gerard"

"Wait a minute, ward?" she's pretty sure she knows what ward means but she can't fit the concept of having one to the image of Klaus she has in her mind. "As in adopted?"

He sits on the bed and without thinking she sits beside him head spinning at this revelation. She knew there was more to him than she'd imagined only weeks ago but she hadn't been ready for this.

"When I found him Marcel was a mere child. A nameless boy, the bastard son of a slave and a plantation owner, beaten and despised by his father," he looks at her sideways with a gleam of wry sadness in his eyes. "I could relate"

She gives him a tight sad smile and he continues. "I killed his father and took him in. I raised him among my family and when he was grown made him, at his request, one of our kind. Marcel was willful at times, challenging too, as sons' are I suppose but for two hundred years he was a part of my family as we ruled New Orleans in prosperity and contentment."

He pauses, looks out of the window and far into the past and she watches his profile and wonders what else he hides beneath the charming megalomaniac he shows the world.

"What happened?" She asks eventually and she can't help but reach out her fingertips to brush encouragingly over his hand. He looks down and turns his own hand over so her fingers are in his palm. She takes the invitation and tangles their fingers together squeezing slightly.

He tips his head enquiringly at the gesture but she just keeps her focus gently on him and waits. "Mikael" he says eventually, of course, what else could make him this vulnerable?

"Eventually he found us and when we fled the burning city it was in the belief that Marcel had perished at his hands. A belief I have now discovered to be entirely mistaken"

"But that's good news right? That he's alive"

"Alive and ruling New Orleans as if it were his own," he stands suddenly and the raving villain is back in full snarling technicolour. "My city! I have no intention of letting Marcel take what is mine"

"But you weren't there, " she tries to reason with him, to send this ugly irascible version of him away and get back to the man who's hand had felt so warm in hers a moment ago. "It was his city too. Did it occur to you that he's just carrying on the family legacy?"

"Marcel saw an opportunity and he made a power grab." Klaus insists and she sees he's walled up against reason, against any softening. "A decision I will ensure he regrets"

"You don't know that, you don't know anything, it's just rumours right?" she insists. She can see his paranoia now bubbling up to the surface, bringing violence and wickedness with it and she hates it, hates him like this. "Call him like a sane person instead of charging off across the country on a vendetta, hear his side"

"There's nothing to hear," his voice rises to a shout and she stands and meets his anger with her own.

"Stop," she commands. "Just stop being so stubborn, he could have good reasons-"

"For what? For taking my city? For stealing my kingdom? For choosing power over family? For not finding us?"

"He hurt you," she tries hard to sound understanding despite that she's so angry with him. Angry that he's showing her this side of himself again when she'd been getting so comfortable with his better self, angry that he won't listen, angry underneath it all that he's leaving. "I understand-"

"You understand nothing!" he rounds on her with a snarl. "I thought him dead, it was decades before I could even speak his name so keenly did I feel his loss. And all the while he-"

"I get it." She cuts in. His anger is driven by pain but it doesn't excuse that his go to response is viscous retribution. "But when the people we care about hurt us we don't swear bloody vengeance Klaus, we reach out to them and we try to forgive them"

"No when people hurt us we punish them. We make them feel our pain a thousand times. Anything less is weakness, anything less is invitation to be hurt over and over again until we can bear no more of it." He's a thousand years old she thinks as he turns his spitting bitterness on her, unbendable and irredeemable why is she even trying to talk sense into him. "Save your bleeding heart Caroline, your naïve notions of forgiveness are for children, fools and weakling and I am none of those things"

He is truly a monster she knows that and he made her care about him, made her care and now he's leaving, the bastard. "Fine then go!" she spits. "Go to New Orleans take back the city crush your son. Be just like your father," she's panting like she's just run a sprint and even as she decides she truly can't abide him her traitorous voice cracks and she's saying words she never meant to say. "Or stay, just stay here and be… Be better. Be someone I don' t have to hate myself for caring about."

He stops short and looks at her so keenly that she squirms. "I'm not saying stay with me. But as your friend I'm telling you," she steps boldly towards him and stares him down. "That this is a mistake, that you are better than this."

He narrows his eyes, his ancient ornery mind doesn't bend easily, she knows that, so she keeps her gaze steady and tries to convey in her eyes faith in her own verdict. "Perhaps," he says, flippancy replacing anger, just another defence, just another wall. "Or perhaps in the end I am forever, inevitably, Mikael's son"

"You don't have to be." She insists, she never has been one to let people get away with being less than their best, her father taught her that. "Come on seriously, your Klaus fricking Mikaelson you can be whatever the hell you want."

And just like that she's through, like she's been swimming up through dark cold water and she's finally broken the surface and into the light. His eyes are blue and wet, and she thinks they might have been almost black a moment ago and his expression is soft with uncertainty.

"Caroline. New Or-"

"No, shut up," she snaps. "Just stop talking about New Orleans ok, the whole thing is crazy"

"Perhaps it is, but the truth is Caroline I had always planned to leave, this business in New Orleans merely gives purpose to my leaving"

"I don't understand" she feels her brow draw downward in a frown and her curls bounce against her cheeks as she shakes her head. "Why?"

"Because of you," he looks into her eyes and she's struck by how sad he can look sometimes. Sad in a way she thinks only a creature as old and lonely as him could possibly be.

"You're leaving me?" In her mind she blames old neuroses and whiskey too early in the day for the slip and corrects herself quickly. "I mean because of me?"

"Sweetheart," he reasons. "I've brought you nothing but misery from the moment I arrived in Mystic Falls surely you must want me gone"

She thinks about it, hadn't she come here to tell him to stay away? Her reason, or perhaps her excuse, for being in his house today had been to demand what he is now offering: freedom from him. She finds with the reality of him actually going that she doesn't want it at all.

"Yes" she confirms softly. "You have brought me and everyone I love nothing but misery and yes I should want you gone"

He looks down and she sees all his buried humanity flowing under the surface, all his pain and regret. She's been here less than quarter of an hour and he's shown her a terrifying kaleidoscope of who he is; bright and dark, wicked and sweet, vicious and vulnerable. She finds that in the reflection of those ever changing colours she can't deny him. He is too thrilling, too tragic, to beautiful, to let go. "But" she continues and turns his face with her palm so she can look into his eyes. "When the people we care about hurt us, we reach out and we try to forgive them"

His hand comes up to cover hers where it lies on his cheek he feels warm and human on her skin and his eyes are so damn wet that she can't stop herself tenderly brushing her thumb across the sharp line of his cheekbone.

He watches her searchingly for moments and she stares back with open honest eyes then he moves to the door and for a moment she's afraid he's going to tell her to go. He doesn't, he opens the door and calls through it. "Mister Goodall, be a good chap and put it all back won't you"

She smiles uneasily at him but he doesn't return it. "Are we friends then?" he asks softly, hopefully.

She nods and he glances bashfully downward. "It's been a long time since I had a friend Caroline" he admits. "I may require some tutelage on the subject"

"Well then lucky for you, I happen to be an excellent friend," she smiles now and it feels warm and natural on her face. "Case in point, my first act as officially your friend: Stopping you embarking on a giant self-destruct and spiral into evil"

"Hmm," he's smiling back, they're both sort of grinning at each other like idiots. "Or possibly thwarting my pursuit of what is rightfully mine and weakening me in the sight of my enemies"

She rolls her eyes cheekily. "Tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to"

 **A/N hope you liked it. I know its slow burn but we are edging Klarolineward i promise.**

 **So who watched the crossover? The originals is so so good at the moment and getting a bit of Klefan in it was** **marvellous.**

 **My fantasy future for the show is that as TVD may get cancelled they're planning to leap The Originals forward 3 years for season 4 and start it with Caroline in NOLA searching for Klaus. I know I know its unlikely but i can dream. (Or maybe write it myself in fanfic land)**


	12. Making Art

**Making art**

"Klaus" she calls as she enters the mansion on Tuesday morning. "Klaus you here?"

"Caroline?" he appears with a rag in his hands and paint on his t-shirt. His feet are bare and it reminds her of the night she watched him sleep. "Are you alright love, what can I do for you?"

"Nothing"

He frowns

"Friendship 101: Hanging out"

"You want to hang out?" He says it like he's never heard anything so implausible in his life and she rolls her eyes and throws her bag down by the door.

"Yip. My mom's still searching for a way to explain my resurrection that doesn't involved compelling the whole town and until she does I'm outta school." She shrugs. "Which is a lot more boring than I'd have predicted."

"Well then love," he throws the rag over his shoulder and smiles flashing charm and dimples her way. "What would you like to do?"

"Dunno. I figure we'll have to work up to girl talk and pedicures," he gives her a predictably irritable look that makes her smirk. "What were you gonna do this morning?"

"I was going to paint"

"Ok," she's struck by an idea. "Can you teach me?" She'd watched him paint a lot during her time on the otherside and actually thought it looked like it might be fun.

He looks adorably baffled by their whole encounter; she imagines friendship to family Mikaelson never looked like this before. "Um, I suppose, do you have any ideas as to what you'd like to explore, medium, subject?"

"Er not really, I've never really thought about it before." She walks past him towards his studio and keeps talking as he trails after her. "I totally blew off art in high school, I thought it was majorly boring but then my art teacher wasn't hot"

She bites her lip at the slip and avoids looking at him. He chuckles. "Very well love, I may have just the thing"

His studio has that sort of cluttered order that a neurotic clean freak like her could never hope to achieve but she can still admire the atheistic of. Canvases some blank, some half finished are stacked at the base of the walls and jars and tubes of paint lie uncategorized on the shelves.

"I took these while you were-" he trails off and his jaw ticks tensely.

"Dead?" she asks perkily.

He narrows his eyes clearly annoyed by her factiousness. "I took these," he shows her a few old fashioned polaroids of the falls, the water reflecting the red of an evening sky. "I had planned to use some techniques I remember from my boyhood."

He buzzes away, suddenly energised. His passion he'd called it once and as he gathers a small collection of jars filed with what looks like sand in an array of natural colours she sees that passion.

He fetches two canvases and lays them on the floor and indicates for her to sit beside him as he starts to explain the technique. "Teach me to paint," she'd said it rather flippantly searching for an hour's distraction. But to him it's like she'd said "show me your world".

He turns a key and she steps through a heavy door into his private realm of light and colour. He guides her hand over the paper, his hand hot over hers his voice as he speaks close to her ear intimate in a way that has nothing to do with sex.

He tells her about the art they're making; shows her how much coloured sand to pinch between her fingers, how to work it into the page to leave streaks of colour. He tells her how to look at the photo, not seeking to copy it but rather to capture its essence and he speaks so passionately and his voice is so rich that she actually feels pretty inspired.

As she settles to her task she asks him about his life back when this is how he painted, cross-legged on the ground with nature's hues staining his skin. He tells her about a life she can't imagine, when survival relied on accuracy with a bow and the strength in your sword arm. It's a history lesson mainly, a first hand account but nothing too personal, nothing about him. She finds that with him beside her so handsome and accomplished, his canvas is already stunning despite how carelessly he seems to work, she wants more than anything to hear something about him, something true.

Final she gets a chance to dig a little when he mentions his mother

"What was Esther like?" she asks. "I mean before she was all resurrected and filicidal?"

He raises an eyebrow, but indulges her. "I used to believe she was a good mother and that she loved us very much. Perhaps she did, she turned us into monsters to protect us I suppose but..." he trails of and leans across to look at her work. "Excellent, try blending in the orange a little more, see how the colours merge into the shadows at the base of the falls"

"Oh, like this?"

His hand settles over hers guiding the movement and his breath stirs across her skin. She's determined to keep her thoughts platonic but she can't deny how hot it is, perhaps more so because he seems oblivious to the potential romance of the situation, he's too wrapped up in the art.

"But?" she prompts when he returns to his own canvas and she trusts her voice not to come out sounding rough and aroused. "Your mom, you said 'but'"

"But, in hindsight I think she was perhaps worse than father. True she would tend our bruises and heal our broken bones, but the truth is she was a powerful witch, she had power enough to make us immortal she had easily enough power to stop a deranged Viking bully from hurting his children.

"And yet she did not." He continues after a barely there pause. "She stood by while Mikael beat us, beat me, half to death time and again and she did nothing. Perhaps she was afraid of him or perhaps she just believed deep down that I deserved it"

She rails against the ease with which he says that on a physical level, a visceral rejection that makes her voice come out harsh and emphatic. "Well she was wrong"

He shrugs like it doesn't matter, brushes off her outrage. "Perhaps I did not then, I have certainly earned it since"

She shakes her head. "I doesn't work like that. You were just an defenceless innocent kid-"

"And now I am a monster" he interrupts and its clear under all his mask of casual indifference that he hates it.

"Yes you are," she says. "God of course you are. Werewolf aggression plus the fear of a beaten boy, heightened through vampirism and distilled over a thousand years of running and bloodlust. How could you be anything other than a monster?"

"Indeed." He looks away and his jaw clenches in pain or anger she's not sure, she doesn't care. She turns his face to hers with her palm, once again she finds herself taking his face in her hands and capturing his eyes. When did making him see the truth become so important to her?

"No" she says softly. "How are you more than a monster? How can you even love at all?"

How can you love me she's asking how can you love me so much when you should be nothing but a shell.

"Caroline"

She drifts closer, when he hurts she's weak for him. Her compassion manifests in every cell of her body, it mobilises her muscles to go to him and seeps from every pore seeking to flow over him.

"Klaus, listen to me, you didn't deserve what they did to you." Her other hand is skating up his arm now and vaguely she's aware that her body has been poised and waiting for this opportunity to comfort him since she came back from the dead.

She wants to kiss him, she's aware with a slight out of body awareness that she really wants to kiss him and if he just leant in a fraction she'd meet his mouth with her own. He does lean in but before she can tilt her lips to his he drops his head so that their foreheads touch and closes his eyes.

They stay that way a long time and both their breath steadies, she hadn't even realised until she feels it ease how raggedly they're both been breathing.

Eventually he pulls away and he looks composed and cool, he indicates her painting lying finished and forgotten on the floor. "I have a perfect frame" he tells her and stands. She watches him as he frames her work with skilled efficient movements, with his eyes and hands busy she can watch him without reserve and so she does because looking at him has always been an addiction of hers. Neither of them speaks until he spins the finished article around for her to see.

Framed it looks really good, she can't believe that even with his guidance she actually made something so good. "Wow" she smiles; distracted from the heaviness of the moments they've just shared by her own accomplishment. "I made art"

He smiles too, pleased by her pleasure. "That you did sweetheart"

She spots the Polaroid camera and grabs it. "Selfie," she decides skipping over to him feeling every inch the teenage girl she still is deep down. She wraps her arm around his shoulder and tips her head so their temples touch as she holds out the camera to get the two of them and her picture in shot.

The camera spins out the photo and she shakes it as the image appears, he's not smiling in the picture, she is like a big toothy fool but he's not. His eyes shine warmly though and his expression is relaxed and tolerant and she fancies a little fond.

He raises an eyebrow when she waves the image at him and she can see again how alien all this is to him.

A clock chimes three nearby before she can tease him about being a relic and she realises with shock that she's been there for hours and that her mother will be home soon. "I gotta get home," she says picking up her painting and tucking the polaroid in the edge of the frame. "Thanks for today, I had fun"

"The pleasure was all mine sweetheart," he says with predictable gallantry and she rolls her eyes lightly. As she turns to go she sees a small stack of papers lying on the desk and immediately recognises the corner of a grey image just peeping out from about half way down.

She spreads out the pages with her free hand. "You kept these?" she asks disbelievingly as his drawings of her corpse slip over the desk. "Seriously?"

His mouth tightens and he gathers them back up with irritated movements.

"Klaus seriously why would you keep those, they're so morbid?"

He shoves the pages in a drawer and glowers at her. "A reminder," he says eventually. "Of what I am capable of"

She takes a deep breath in through her nose and steps towards him, pulling out the photo of the two of them. "Burn them," she commands softly, firmly, brooking no argument, and hands him the photo. "Keep this. As a reminder of what you're capable of"

He frowns and looks down at the image and she leaves. At the front door he catches her. "Caroline" he doesn't smile, he looks a little at sea. "Thank you for today"

She leans in and gives in to the urge to lay her lips on him, chastely on his cheek. "Your welcome"

….

Her mother comes home as she's hanging her painting in her bedroom.

"Hey sweetie," Liz steps into her room. "What did you do today?"

"I made art," she declares proudly and she and her mother admire the abstract painting for a few moments.

"That's incredible," her mother sounds genuinely impressed.

"Isn't it?" she enthuses in the glow of her mother's praise. "Its sand painting, you do it with your fingers." She holds up her stained fingertips. "Just like they did a thousand years ago."

She looking back at the painting when she realises her mother has gone tense beside her. "Caroline, darling where have you been today?"

"Oh" she keeps her eyes on the picture and tries to sound casual. "Just hanging out, making art"

"At the Mikaelsons'?"

She turns to her mother with a brittle smile. "Yeah. Klaus kinda owes me entertainment right? Since it's his fault I'm outta school"

"Caroline what are you thinking?" her mothers eyes are full of maternal concern. "You need to stay away from that man"

"Its fine mom," she tries to sound unaffected by her mother's reaction, like spending time with Klaus is perfectly reasonable behavior. "We were just hanging out"

"He's dangerous,"

Well isn't that the truth? She thinks wryly but her mother surely realises that dangerous is a relative term in Mystic Falls. "We're all dangerous," she counters. "Me, Tyler, Stefan, your buddy Damon, even Elena, we're all potentially diabolical, particularly Damon"

"But he's dangerous to you," Liz insists.

"He's not," she doubts anyone, least of all her mother will believe this fact that she is so certain is true, still she has to try and convince her mother that she knows what she's doing. "He'd never hurt me."

"He killed you," disbelief and rising worry make her mother's tone sharp.

"I know, but he saved me mom," honestly she's not sure why she's flogging this dead horse of an argument. Except that when she'd told him to keep their photo, she'd meant it, she'd wanted him to believe in his own ability to be better, what kind of miserable hypocrite would she be if she didn't believe it too?. "He's the reason I'm back. I know he screwed up but he never meant to kill me"

Her mom looks at her with a sort of terrified pity in her eyes and says softly. "He meant to kill Carol"

"I know," there really is no arguing with that but that's not her starting point for their friendship. "But he's been through so much and mom if you don't give people a chance to be better then they never will be"

"Klaus Mikaelson doesn't want to be better he doesn't want to change even if he could"

"I know he's done horrible things but-"

"But nothing Caroline." Liz is clearly done with this discussion and she stamps her authority on the conversation with a raised hand and a stern command. "You stay away from him do you hear me, that man is completely irredeemable"

Her mother goes with a slam of the door and she's left with her response falling into empty air. "No one's irredeemable mom"

She lies on her bed and stares at the painting wishing she hadn't left the polaroid at Klaus' she wants to look at them together, just to reassure herself that her mother is wrong, that she's not being an idiot to think he could change. In the end she picks up her phone and lies back on the bed staring at the ceiling.

"Hey" she greets.

"Something wrong love?" his concern immediately reassures her and she sighs and relaxes. He cares about her, he is more than everyone thinks.

"Had a row with my mom," she explains with a huff.

"What about?"

"My painting"

"She didn't like it?" he asks carefully and she suspects he knows exactly what's happened with her mom.

"She loved it. She just didn't like my choice of art teacher." she sighs noisily. "She is firmly of the opinion that you are utterly irredeemable and I should stay away from you."

"An astute woman the sheriff," he says it lightly and that makes her cross.

"Shut up." She snaps. She's had enough of this tune, whoever's singing it. "She doesn't even know you"

"Love Liz's right to be concerned you must see that," he says reasonably and she calms under the timber of his voice. "I wouldn't trust me with you either in her position"

"I guess" they're silent for a few moments. "Klaus?"

"Yes sweetheart"

"Are you irredeemable?"

"Oh love," He laughs with such sadness that her eyes prick with tears. "You know I am. The blood on my hands, the thousands I've killed, redemption is far beyond my reach"

"I don't believe that," and she doesn't, she truly believe he can change, believes it somewhere brave and stalwart in her heart.

She senses rather than hears his affectionate laugh. "You are a stubborn and magnificent woman Caroline Forbes"

A knock at the door signals the arrival of Elena and Bonnie and she hangs up quickly with a hurried, "Gotta go" and a quick unsure. "Speak soon?" that makes him chuckle fondly.

"Of course love, go on now"

She's just relaxing after her spat with her mother, her friends are there, there's soda and pool and curly fries and she feels like she's back form the dead in more ways than one when the boys arrive. Tyler takes her pool queue from her hand and pulls her in for a kiss that makes her giggle happily.

But when he pulls back his eyes are dark and angry. "Ty?" she asks but she already knows what's wrong because her argument with her mom meant she forgot to shower and Klaus' body had pressed lightly against hers while they'd painted earlier his earthy smell skipping from his skin to hers.

"What happened Care?" Tyler asks and she thinks she's going to have to defend herself when he gently squeezes her shoulders. "Are you ok?"

"What's up?" Bonnie asks

"I smell Klaus" Tyler says darkly. "Did he hurt you?"

"No, god, no," she pulls awkwardly away lies forming in her mouth, tasting so bad she has to let them out. "I just ran into him earlier today, he was mooching about town you know being Klaus, its no biggy "

A glass shatters in Tyler's hand and everyone jumps. "You shouldn't have to deal with him Care, not after what he did to you"

"Ty don't worry ok?" she tries to sound casual, almost bored but she knows it comes out more irritated. How strange guilt can make your voice sound she thinks. "Running into your murderer is kinda par for the course in this freaky town. I can handle it"

"That's not what I mean Care"

It takes a moment to remember the conversation Klaus had with Tyler while she was dead. Oh shit she thinks.

"Its fine" she says still straining to force indifference into her tone. "Not like we can atagonise the most powerful family of vamps in the world. I just have to deal with it"

"You shouldn't have to" Tyler repeats

"Forget it Ty," and now she does snap because, despite that he hasn't done a thing wrong, but there's just too much tension building in her head. "I'm fine, I don't want to talk about it ok"

"Of course babe, " he tries to smile and touches her tentatively on the hand. "I'm sorry"

Suddenly she sees things she hasn't seen before. How careful Tyler has been with her, how they haven't made love since she's been back. Tyler is being a good boyfriend, she's let him believe all these weeks that she's the victim of a sexual violation and he's giving her time and space to deal. She can see now its messing with him, that he's struggling to cope but he's put that aside for her and what's she been doing? Her mind drifts to her time with Klaus, his voice and body close to her, the tingling of anticipation in every nerve when he leant close to her, god she's a bitch.

She initiates sex that night, doesn't stop to wonder why she hasn't done so already. Tyler is so careful with her, asks her several times if she's ok and she feels wretched. Her time with Klaus in the forest seems so long ago to her but it's clearly front and center in his mind an she should regret it, wants to tell herself that she does in fact regret it. She does not instead she holds it close a shameful and treasured secret held next to her heart.

She whispers that she loves him into Tyler's skin and knows its true but when he falls asleep she doesn't follow him. She stares at the painting she and Klaus drew and runs every detail of the day they spent together over in her head.

Irredeemable Klaus with his wet troubled eyes, cruel temper and pretty tempting lips. She hasn't kissed them, their heat and softness are a mystery to her still and yet looking at the picture hanging so proudly on her wall she can almost taste him on her tongue.

 **A/N hope you like.**

 **Shameless plug: I've another Klaroline fic on the go called All the Dirty** **Thoughts (read into that title what you will :-P) check it out.**


	13. Confession

**Confession**

She storms out of the boarding house and stamps towards town. She can't believe that conversation went so badly. She'd actually considered talking to Elena about the whole Klaus thing, she's been feeling pretty desperate to get it off her chest but the conversation had started to deteriorate long before she'd got anywhere near that prickly subject.

Instead they'd got stuck on Damon Salvatore and Elena's inability to recognise a massive romantic mistake while she was committing one. Voices had been raised, words had been said; it was a mess.

It's barely midday but the whole encounter has left her desperate for a drink and someone to talk too. She pulls out her phone, he's not in her recent calls list because she deleted him like some trampy cheater just in case Tyler happened to see her phone. So she scrolls down to K, despite passing the numbers of several much more appropriate companions on the way, and types a message.

"Bad morning! Need beer and company. Grill?"

The response comes before she reaches the town. "Yes" She shakes her head a little at the curtness but smiles, small and private, as she puts the phone away. He's there before her and she wonders if he was already out or if he vamped over. Either way a cold beer is waiting for her when she settles opposite him in a booth in the corner.

"Problems love?" he asks sipping his scotch. He looks good, and like he's in a good mood. Eyes bright, lips hinting at a smile.

"I had a fight with Elena," she says with a huff.

"My my sweetheart," he teases gently. "You are at odds with everyone at the moment."

She narrows her eyes, she's grumpy and upset after her row with Elena and he's being flippant. "Hey, don't be an ass," she scolds but his good mood is infectious and a smile threatens her lips. "Its Elena who was being unreasonable"

"Sorry love," he doesn't look sorry, he looks positively buoyant. "What's wrong with the doppleganger?"

"Well she's back all emotion having and unsired but she's still running round after Damon despite him being pretty much the worst example of a man in the world, ever"

"Ah." He puts down his drink and lean his elobows on the table, his attention caught. "She's made her choice then, I can't say I'm surprised"

"Well I am." She retorts a little crossly. "Damon is just, blurgh. What could she possibly see in him?"

"The heart is a mysterious thing Caroline and sometimes we do not love people for what they can offer us, but rather for what they bring out in us," he looks momentarily unsure as if his next words are potentially controversial. "What we can offer them"

She frowns. She doesn't understand and his hesitation unsettles her, is he she wonders, thinking of her when he says those things, is he hopeful of that in some way?

"Listen," he says siting back with a forced nonchalance. "Elena is a compassionate creature and forgiving to a fault. I'm not surprised to see her heart lead her to a creature like Damon. Without her he's nothing but a selfish and bloodthirsty monster, with her he can strive for some higher purpose. To someone like Elena that need would no doubt be quite compelling."

"I just don't get it. Stefan needs her too and Stefan is so much better than Damon, in literally every way." She's aware her words sound almost childish, stubborn and slightly whiney, but she can't wrap her head around Elena's choice.

"Well I must say I agree that Stefan is undoubtedly the better option," he says with a sudden smile.

"Exactly!" She pounces on something she can comprehend and takes the opportunity it presents to vent a little. "Damon is a lousy drunk man-whore. Not to mention selfish and not nearly as funny as he thinks he is. Stefan loves her and he's kind and interesting and-"

"Noble, handsome, considerate," Klaus cuts in with a look of playful mocking jealousy. "He really is quite the catch, anyone in their right mind would chose him"

"Did you?" she asks impulsively.

"Sorry love?"

Her face flames, she can't believe she's actually asking this. "It's just you kinda said you've been with guys and you and Stefan were all bromance in the twenties. I just wondered if you and he, you know? Did stuff"

He laughs rich and deep and his eyes sparkle so brightly that she feels herself warm in their reflected glow. "Frankly Caroline, I'm a little concerned that you're so interested. You haven't been picturing something of the sort have you now?"

"No jees," she snaps. It's true she hasn't but she has a sudden feeling she might in the future. "I was just wondering "

He grins at her embarrassment, but favours her with an answer rather than teasing her anymore. "Over the course of a thousand years, you'll find you will sample every pleasure life can offer and while a few men have captured my interest over the centuries women have generally been my preference. Besides, delightful as Stefan is I wouldn't have risked it, Rebekah would have ripped off my balls"

She laughs and she feels better, so much more relax than when she walked in, happier or maybe just happy.

Happy like she'd been kneeling beside him in his studio a few days ago, happy like she'd been sleeping in his bed with his alcohol laced breath stinging her nostrils and his arm around her waist.

She's wanted him since he first laid his wicked eyes on her and she saw them spark with desire, felt the answering spark smolder in the tinder of her inexperienced sexuality until it burst into flame that day in the forest. But happy? Klaus Mikaelson makes her happy and the thought turns her smile to a frown.

He tips his head questioningly. "Love?" he asks and she knows its just an endearment he throws around like confetti but its rings like an echo of her own thoughts.

No that is madness. Affection, friendship, unquenchable desire, those are the things she can allow herself to feel for him, but not love, surely never love.

"Sorry, just a little unnerved by the realisation that you of all people can cheer me up so much," her voice bites with sourness but she softens her words with a smile that feels warm and affectionate and indulgent as it spreads so naturally across her lips.

He looks so pleased and boyish and just so flat out gorgeous that she has to forcibly remind herself that he is still the man who killed Jenna and Carol and a whole pack of hybrids not very long ago.

"And there's the other side of Elena's choice" he says, and as if reading her thoughts. "Sometimes knowing someone is a terrible person, as you know I am, doesn't stop their company being enjoyable. Damon may be little more than pond life but he is blessed with a certain charisma that Elena may not be able to resist"

"Well just because someone is charming doesn't make them good boyfriend material." She tells him with a hint of indignace. "A quick pros and cons list would have cleared that up in a jiffy"

"What an utterly depressing thought." He smirks a pretty playful smirk and his eyes glitter teasingly. "I assume my list was a little one sided."

She narrows her eyes, things could turn decidedly flirtatious between them from here and as she is spoken for she should really put a stop to it. She doesn't she's weak for the buzz of excitement and the gleam in his eyes.

"As a matter of fact-" she begins haughtily with her own eyes flashing mischief and invitation at the hybrid.

"Caroline," Tyler's urgent voice feels like freezing water poured over her head stealing her breath and making her skin prickle unpleasantly.

For a second her wild guilty eyes meet Klaus' and he gives an almost imperceptible nod that she can't interpret.

"Ty-" she starts but the hybrid is already on his feet sliding in front of his protégé with a nasty grin.

"Tyler" he greets with fake slithering charm and he looks so different from a moment ago that she can barely recognise his dark goading eyes. "Join us for a drink mate?"

"Leave her alone." Tyler grinds out, like his anger is almost rendering him mute and she can virtually feel her boyfriend's muscles twitching with the need for violent action.

"Ty," she hadn't noticed Jeremy but now the younger Gilbert is stepping in to try and talk Tyler down. "Come on man it's not worth it"

"Besides sweet Caroline is perfectly welcome to leave if she wants. She is here of her own free will." Oh God she thinks, Klaus is really going to taunt Tyler with their relationship. Sure she hasn't actually done anything wrong but somehow, with her lies and her hiding and her secret doubts, she has turned there recent platonic meetings into something illicit.

"Bullshit," Tyler spits but his eyes flash to her and he looks like his certainty is wavering. Perhaps he saw how they were looking at each other, the cozy laughter they were sharing or the flirtatious smile tugging her lips. She cringes at the thought.

"Come on," she stands and moves to try and get them all away from this potentially explosive situation. "Lets just go"

"No." Tyler faces his sire stubbornly. "Leave her alone you sick bastard. Care why are you even talking to him?"

"Unlike you," Klaus says smoothly, smarm and threat all over his voice. "Caroline appreciates that I am the only thing standing between my somewhat volatile brother Kol and his completely justified yearning for vengeance," he eyes Jeremy coldly and then his hands run sleazily down her bare arms making her tense. "Best keep me sweet, right love?"

"Fucker," Tyler swings at Klaus and she and Jeremy get physically between the pair as Klaus steps back with an ugly mirthless laugh.

They drag Tyler out of the grill, one either side voices low and firm. At the door she turns back to look at him and his expression is back to something she can recognise. He gives a closed lipped smile and a nod.

She wants to say something. To tell him he didn't have to do that. Didn't have to draw the hate onto himself once again to protect her, but she has to go and part of her is just plain glad he covered for her again. Poorly done Caroline, she thinks as they leave the grill with Tyler fuming and Jeremy catching her eye knowingly, poorly done.

…

She wants to talk to Bonnie but the witch is nowhere to be found and she has to talk to someone. Her next choice would normally be Elena, but she and Elena are on the outs and besides she's not ready to admit to the level of hypocrisy her confession reveals.

She finds Stefan and remembers how she'd thought about telling him once before. "Stefan," she dives in without any other greeting. "I did a bad thing."

"Hi" he says patiently. "Come in"

They settle either side of the dead fire in the parlour at the boarding house and she takes a deep breath and wrings her hands.

"Ok," she begins. "I need to tell someone and I figured you won't judge me too much. You won't judge me right?"

"I won't judge you" he assures her and she knows its true and loves him so much for it.

"Right, ok, so" she begins nervously. He gives her an encouraging smile and she takes a deep breath and continues. "Do you remember when we thought Ric had killed Klaus and I got kidnapped by those creepy commando guys?"

He nods and she nods back determinedly. "So suddenly Tyler's there and he rescues me and we're on the run through the forest. It's a pretty hot situation and I totally wanted to have sex. So we did"

"O-kay?" he says slowly, clearly confused.

"Timelines Stefan," nervousness makes her snappy. "When we thought Ric had killed Klaus, but…" she looks at him expectantly as realisation dawns slowly on his face

"But Klaus was actually in Tyler's body"

She nods and makes a pained face

"Did you know?" Stefan asks after a moment or two of processing.

"Well not immediately, but yeah, soon enough to have stopped it, if id' wanted too"

His brow furrows then he asks the inevitable and needless question. "But you didn't because?"

"Because Klaus is powerful and hot and freakishly charming," she answers impatiently, and then more softly and full of self-recrimination. "And because I am a terrible person and I thought I could get away with it."

"You're not a terrible person Caroline"

She gives him an unconvinced look; her face feels ugly with her confession, mouth drawn down and brow furrowed.

"Look, you made a mistake and yes you did a bad thing, but that doesn't make you terrible Care, just human"

"But it gets worse." She ploughs on, encouraged by Stefan's support. "Because I didn't get away with it and while I was dead Tyler confronted Klaus, and Klaus, who was pretty manically obsessed at the time with bringing me back from the dead to a picture perfect life, told Tyler that he'd tricked me and I hadn't known. So now on top of everything else Tyler thinks Klaus is a rapist and is being super sweet with me and is super mad with Klaus"

"Ok that could be a problem," Stefan says thoughtfully.

"No shit. He saw me and Klaus together at the grill today –"

"Wait," Stefan cuts in confused. "You were with Klaus?"

"Yes" she draws out the word uncertainly like she's waiting for him to scold her. "We've been kinda hanging out, just a bit you know because he brought me back from the dead and I haven't had school, it's been… nice."

Stefan is looking at her like she's grown another head so she ploughs on quickly. "Anyway Tyler went ape and Klaus covered for me again. Ratcheted up the creepy and made it look like I didn't have any choice. And afterwards Tyler was talking crazy about putting Klaus down, I think he's actually going to try it and if he does..." she trails off and shakes her head

"Klaus will kill him" Stefan finishes for her

She huffs thoughtfully. "Actually I don't think he would. But Rebekah, Kol, even Elijah they aren't going to let anyone go after their brother, they'd rip him apart"

"Do you know the worst thing?" She says after a long pause while Stefan just keeps quite and lets her work out her thoughts. The man is a gifted listener and she trusts him completely with the rest of her confession. "I mean the really worst thing. When this all feels crazy and scary and I don't know what to do, there's only one place I wanna go"

Stefan looks understanding. "To Klaus" he says and it's not a question.

"To Klaus" she confirms with a heavy tearful sigh.

"Care do you have feelings for him?"

"No I mean how could I? " He looks skeptical and she shrugs, "I don't know. I know that I love Tyler but, Stefan, I think, I think I'm choosing Klaus"

In saying it she knows it's true; that her heart is moving towards the original. It was baby steps at first, a softening here a warming there while she watched him from the otherwise, but now she's back and she feels like she's accelerating towards him, a little out of control and a lot scared, just like the first time the rode her bike without stabalisers, wobbly and frightened but also free and exhilarated and on the cusp of something exciting.

"Oh god Stef, what's wrong with me? Why do I want him so much?" she presses her hands to each side of her head as if trying to physically push Klaus out of the home he's somehow carved out for himself inside her. "He's an awful person, he's hurt everyone I care about. He killed me for god's sake and I just want to wrap my arms around him and fix everything for him"

"There's nothing wrong with you Caroline, I know how Klaus can be"

"Yeah," she gives a brittle unconvincing laugh and clutches at something she thinks she can understand. "No doubt you saw him seduce hundreds of dumb blondes with that nuclear charm of his back in the twenties."

"Some," Stefan isn't going to indulge her in this evasion; his expression is serious and supportive but also firm and uncompromising. "Probably not as many as you're imagining. But that's not what I mean."

"I know what you mean." She closes her eyes and sighs like a whisper of defeat. "I guess I'd almost rather believe I'm just another idiot getting played, because the alternative is way scarier"

"So what are you going to do?" Stefan asks after a long pensive silence.

"I don't know." She shrugs heavily, feels all the weight of all the bad choices she made, all the bad choices she'll have to make in the future too, weigh down on her. "If I tell Tyler the truth he'll be devastated and if I don't he could get himself killed."

She doesn't tell Tyler, not that night and not the next day when they meet up and make love in the afternoon with her stomach twisting in guilty knots the whole time. Deep down she knows why and she can't say she likes herself very much for it.

Because if Tyler knows then he'll leave her and if he leaves there will be nothing to stop her from throwing herself, body and soul, at Klaus.

Without the guilt, the shame, the fear of hurting her first love, to control her reckless heart she knows there'll be nothing standing between her and the scariest of possible futures.


	14. Recollections in silk

**Recollections in silk**

She sees Klaus across the square the next morning. He's strolling down the street with Kol, who bounces around him like a child clearly trying to persuade his older brother of something. Beside them Rebekah makes walking in six inch Louboutins look easy as she sashays along with her blond hair swaying prettily behind her.

She strains her hearing and catches Rebekah's bored tone. "Oh come on NIk there's never anything to do in this one pony town, we may as well"

"Fine Rebekah," the hybrid gives in sounding exasperated. "We'll go to this ridiculous ball."

"Marvelous darling," Kol says with a laugh as the three pass out of sight.

Of course the founder's day parade and ball is just days away, and with her mother finally having given in and allowed her and Damon to compel everyone in town who matters to believe that her death was a case of mistaken identity, she's on the guest list.

She hasn't given it much thought with everything that's going on, but knowing Klaus will be there makes her heart beat just a fraction faster and she grabs her phone and texts Elena.

"Hey. Sorry. Want to make up over founder's day prep?"

The response is immediate. "I'm so glad you texted. Yes lets. I'm sorry too, I love you"

Friendship with Elena is so easy; the girl loves so willingly and forgives so readily that she thinks maybe Klaus is right and her friend's heart is big enough to just keep on loving Damon no matter how badly he behaves.

Bonnie doesn't make it to their girly hair and makeup session. She laughs fondly with Elena about how hard it is to pries their friend off the younger Gilbert since his resurrection. "If I wasn't so happy he's back, they'd be totally grossing me out," Elena confesses with a beaming smile. "The PDAs are way too much"

"Speaking of all things smoochies," she says a little embarrassed. "I'm sorry I gave you a hard time about Damon"

"It's ok," Elena smiles a small inward smile, fond and loving, and she knows the brunette is thinking about her current Salvatore. "I get it, Damon's not exactly a smart choice"

She can't hold in the snort of agreement that that comment provokes but she's smiling when Elena looks at her and they both give a short rueful laugh.

"Elena," she begins tentatively as her friend goes back to twisting her hair around a curling iron. "Can I ask you something? About you and Damon"

"Ok" Elena sounds apprehensive so she smiles broadly at her friend.

"Right so here's how it works. When you get together with a guy you think he's perfect, then he starts to screw up and eventually if he screws up too many times you dump his ass and move on"

Elena laughs, "I guess"

"But if you start with the screw up, with the guy you know is going to do everything wrong. How do you ever know it's time to go? You know, what triggers you to walk away? What stops you being trapped forever? And I mean literally forever"

Elena tips her head a looks thoughtful for a moment as if she's never really looked at it that way. "I guess," she says eventually. "That I'd walk away if Damon stopped trying, if I didn't believe he wanted to be better"

She lets that soak in. It doesn't seem like much of a safety net. She thinks of Klaus with all his damage and demons, she can't imagine taking all that on without some kind of escape strategy. If she let herself fall for him and he didn't, couldn't, change, how long would she be shackled to loving him through all his malefactions before she finally broke away? How far down could he drag her?

"You ok Care?" Elena's concerned voice drags her from her thoughts and she shakes her head sharply to clear it. "You went somewhere" Elena probes gently.

"Yeah, just seems like a hell of a lot of faith"

"It is," Elena grins. "But I love Damon and I believe he loves me enough to really change, that's all I need"

She can't think of a response but she feels her smile is uneasy on her face and she's grateful when Elena breaks the tensions with a bright grin. "Not saying its not terrifying though, because it totally is"

She grins back then frowns and looks down at her dress. "This dress sucks," she says with a pout.

"It's ok"

"No its flimsy and not very authentic" she lifts the skirt and lets it fall limpy back down onto her thighs. "I think my petticoats are polyester"

Elena laughs warmly at her pouting and shrugs. "Well you can't get another one now, you'll just have to rely on that famous Miss Mystic deportment"

She throws a lipstick hard at Elena who catches it vamp speed and sticks out her tongue.

That night she waits just a few impatient minutes after saying goodbye to Tyler and bidding her mother goodnight before she slips silently from the house and vamps across town to the mansion.

She learnt her lesson on sneaking up on him when he almost threw a stake through her heart so she clomps in loudly, bellowing his name.

"Enough with the shouting darling," Kol appears and she sighs, she hadn't thought that she might have to deal with his siblings. "My brother is possessed of heightened senses you know. Better even than ours or so he'd have us believe"

"Well I am a hybrid brother, superior species and all," Klaus follows his brother into the room, they're both barefoot and casually dressed, glasses of scotch in their hands and matching cheeky grins on their obviously drunk faces.

"Hi," she addresses Klaus. "Sorry to interrupt your" she makes a swirling gesture with her hand. "Session. I need a favour."

"A favour for a lady," Kol skips over and tips his head as if to observe her from a new angle. "We would be honoured."

Klaus rolls his eyes but she speaks before he gets a chance. "Actually I was looking for Klaus"

"Really," Kol looks dramatically affronted and glances between her and his brother. "And what fair lady can Nik possibly do for you that I cannot? Fetch a stick perhaps, bury a bone"

"That's enough Kol," Klaus snaps in irritation.

"Yes Kol stop being an arse," Rebekah appears with mischief in her eyes and bitchiness in her tone. "Caroline. Coming in through the front door rather than Nik's bedroom window this time, how brazen"

Kol pulls a scadalised face at her and Klaus growls. "Piss off the pair of you or I'll put you both back in your boxes"

"Always with the dagger threats. Careful Nik or your girlfriend will think you're a psychopath"

"I mean it Kol-"

"Miss Forbes," Elijah interrupts smoothly as he enters the room smiling a subtle charming smile. "I trust resurrection is treating you well?"

"Hi Elijah," she tries to sound friendly. "Yep, beats the hell out of being dead"

"I'm very glad to hear it, I assume your business is with Niklaus."

She nods and he bows slightly. "Rebekah, Kol, come" he orders firmly and they trail after him looking huffy and childish.

"The whole family," she remarks with a grin when he looks at her apologetically. "My lucky night"

"Yes my apologies, Caroline, what can I do for you love?"

"Well you know I missed my prom right?" she says with theatrical innocence

He frowns and she grins to herself and continues conversationally. "I was gonna look so hot, I'd picked my dress and everything. "

"Caroline, what do you want?"

"Well since I missed my prom," she looks at him pointedly. "You remember why I missed it right?"

"Clearly," he's trying to sound annoyed but his eyes are bright with alcohol and she can see he's delighted to play along with her impish game. "And you are clearly of a mind to demand recompense, so have at it sweetheart, what must I do for penance"

"My founder's day dress sucks, it's cheap and it really doesn't flatter me," she says getting to the point and turning businesslike. "I was wondering if you had any creepy 19th century memorabilia that might work"

He laughs and offers her his arm with a nod. She slips hers through it and lets him lead her upstairs enjoying the proximity and the familiar smell of alcohol that clings to him reminding her of the night she came back and he held her as she slept. He takes her into a small room lined with dozens of dresses; silks and brightly coloured satins from every era.

"Wow" she looks about with wide eyes. "I can't decide if this is amazing of deeply creepy.

"I'm naturally nostalgic"

"Right." She wanders around the room running her fingers over the dresses. "Did you kill all these women?" she asks.

He chuckles, "Far fewer than you'd imagine"

She looks at him over her shoulder. "Did you sleep with them all?"

His lips twitch and he looks a little abashed. "Yikes" she mutters, thinking of all the beauties from whom he stripped these dresses over the years, all the women who've felt what she has not, his lips on theirs, his body moving inside them. She blushes a little and covers her reaction with derisive snort.

"Well I am a thousand years old love," he says reasonably. "You have to expect my bedpost to be a little more notched than yours."

"Notched?" she scoffs good-naturedly. "Your bedpost has termites."

She wanders around the room for a few more silent minutes, the dresses appear to be sorted in chronological order at the far end a medieval gown in deep burgundy draws her attention and she's unsettled by the evidence of the centuries that have passed during his lifetime.

"You ok love?" he asks eventually.

"Yeah, it's just kinda weird," she fingers a corseted dress in gold silk. "All these dead girls"

He considers her for a moment then he flashes her a bright smile and makes a bid to lighten the atmosphere. "Not all dead" he says. "Some are actually magnificently long lived. The owner of that particular dress is almost as old as I am," he nods to the burgundy gown. "She also owned that one"

That shocks her and stirs something in her chest that feels like a suspicious rise of jealousy. "Wow the very first dress, who was she?"

He gives a small huff and his smile smoothes out. "Aurora de Martel" he says and the name flows off his tongue so naturally that she feels that niggle of jealously stir again. "The first vampire my sister sired and still very much alive today, somewhere."

She wander's over to the ancient gown, the material is fragile with age but it's clearly been preserved with care, why would this dress mean so much to him she wonders. "She also owned the impressive Elizabethan gown over there and a fun little Celtic number form the thirteen hundreds"

He's trying to be lighthearted but his words make her snippy. "Wow, she just keeps popping up doesn't she?" She snarks, and then, quickly because he looks confused by her outburst, she asks. "What was she like?"

He narrows his eyes. "Nothing like you," he says knowingly. "If that's what you're asking. Aurora was beautiful and captivating yes but she was also capricous and entitled and I suspect unnaturally close to her brother"

She gives him a sugary smile. "Well I'm sure that's been said about Rebekah"

He makes a disgusted face. "To use the vernacular, " he retorts disdainfully. "Eww"

That makes her grin and he smiles briefly before turning again to the dress she's still absently fingering. "It took me centuries to realize she was poison," he says and then he shakes himself from the memory. "Eighteen hundreds" he says and tips his hand towards the other end of the rack its strange to think that what seems so far in the past to her is pretty recent to him.

She rummages through and finds just what she's looking for. "Wow" she mutters as she pulls out a pale blue dress, with full layered skirts and a low portrait neckline. "So who's was this?"

He grins and she can tell the memories of this woman are happier, easier, than those of Aurora. "Constance Hewitt" he says with a salacious grin. "She was an exquisite beauty. When I met her she was sitting meekly between her hypocritical slave owning father and tediously pious betrothed. She was buttoned up and chaste but when she looked at me I could see the spark of a fierce desire."

She raises her eyebrows and he laughs. "I seduced her in the gardens of her father's plantation house. She was wide-eyed and breathless and so very eager. Next time I saw her she was the talk of the state, living a high wild life of scandal and misdemeanor, my attentions served her well in the end I think."

She shakes her head at the carefree way he tells the tale, she imagines each dress has a story and part of her would like to hear them but a larger part is sharply jealous in a way she has no right to be. Women have come and gone for him, each significant in their own way, each now long left behind.

"So what would you say about my dress a century from now?" she asks against her better judgment. She almost adds "When you show your latest squeeze all this" but she holds in the pithy remark, reminding herself she is not his current squeeze and she has no claim on his future.

He steps towards her and the air around then grows thick and heavy. "I would say simply, that this was Caroline's and she is my friend," he raises a hand to drag his knuckles across her jawline and she watches his eyes with thundering heart and dry mouth. "And they would never know how much that means."

She's struck dumb. How does he do this to her? How even in this moment surrounded by the evidence of so many of his conquests can he make her feel so totally unique, so special?

She draws in breath and hears the tremble in it. Is this how Constance sounded? She wonders and the thought is enough to straighten her back and put a little sass back in her smirk. She rolls her eyes and gives a fondly dismissive shake of her head.

His lips tighten in response, a hint of a smile playing over them at the familiarity of the moment. "Want to try it one love?" he asks. "If memory serves Constance was about your size"

"Nah that's fine, I should get home before my mum checks my room and puts out a ten fifty seven," she shakes her head dismissively at his confused frown not offering an explanation of the police codes that she's known for as long as she can remember. "I'll see you at the ball then?"

He nods and she leans in and kisses his cheek unable to resist letting her lips linger a little against the rough stubble. "Thanks for the dress"

If she's glad when Tyler tells her he has a football game and can't make it to the founder's ball she doesn't allow herself to dwell on it. If she did she would tell herself it was simply that she didn't want him near the originals for his own safety. She would certainly not acknowledge that she's happy to have the freedom to talk to Klaus without Tyler's suspicious anger.

She gets ready with her mom rather than with Elena and Bonnie and is glad not to have to explain the new gown to her friends. She coifs her hair, carefully applies a natural looking makeup and wonders if she could compete with Constance and her 'exquisite' beauty.

One look from him when she enters, fashionably late, tells her that she does. She gives him a small secret smile before dutifully going to Stefan who is alone on the other side of the room.

"Hey" she greets and her friend manages a small forced smile that breaks her heart, across the room Damon twirls a smiling Elena in elegant circles.

"You look great Care," Stefan compliments knowingly. "Nice dress. Klaus?"

She shrugs. "I missed prom because of him, he owed me"

They talk a while. She tries to keep her eyes off Klaus but he's talking to a leggy brunette she doesn't recognise whose body language is decidedly flirtatious and she strains her hearing to try and catch the conversation.

"Care"

"Ah ha"

"Care, if you want to hear you'll have to get closer, maybe hide behind the canapés"

"Mmm hmm. What? No!" she splutters and at his amused chuckle she narrows her eyes. "Ha ha"

It's good to see him laugh though, she feels like it's a sound she hasn't heard in months and if she has to be the butt of the joke then fine so long as he's smiling.

"We should dan-" she starts but she's cut of by a familiar almost lisping drawl.

"Caroline," Klaus slinks forward with lithe predatory movements and dark threatening eyes. "Don't you look charming?"

"Klaus," Stefan greets in the resigned tone he reserves for the original.

"Hello ripper, mind if I steal our Caroline for a dance?" he looks pointedly across the room at where Elena and Jeremy are laughing with Bonnie. "What a happy scene," he says and he sounds horribly like the Klaus that rolled into town and scared her with the friendly threat in everything he said. "It would be a shame-"

"Klaus" she cuts in sharply. "Stop ok, I'd love to dance." She stands and looks down at Stefan. "Will you be ok?"

Her friend just rolls his eyes at her clucking and waves her off. "Ok, you get the next one ok" she promises before taking the hybrid's hand and letting him lead her on to the dance floor.

"Forgive me love," he says once she settles naturally into his embrace. "I'm a little confused"

"Stefan knows," she admits. "That we're friends, and, well everything actually"

He frowns his confusion but doesn't push her instead he falls back on his charm. "You look ravishing Caroline"

"As good as Constance?" she asks playfully

"Better" he assures her with a broad dimpled smile.

Stefan doesn't get the next dance nor any after that. Only later does she realize how they must have looked as Klaus twirled her in dizzying exhilarating circles, her head tilted up to meet his eyes their bodies pressed lightly together, lost completely in each other's gaze. Like a something from a movie or the cover of a trashy novel, like lovers.

Eventually their bubble bursts. Suddenly a hand on her shoulder stops the swirling magic and leaves her reeling and wobbly legged.

"May we cut in?" Damon's mocking voice comes moments before his arms go around her and he steers her away from Klaus. She sees Elena move stiffly into Klaus' arms and strains her hearing to catch the words that pass hostilely between them.

"You want to dance?" Klaus asks disbelievingly.

"No," Elena says with her martyr's dignity. "Touching you makes my skin crawl, but you're not the only one invested in protecting Caroline"

"Damon," she snaps. "What's going on?"

"Trust me you'll thank me Blondie," Damon responds cryptically.

"Seriously?" she barks. "Tell me already"

"You're boyfriend's on his way up the drive Carebear." Damon smirks nastily at her startled look. "Bad enough that you're wearing eau de original hybrid, Elena figured you didn't want to get caught making googoo eyes at him too"

"I wasn't making…" she trails off under Damon's hard look. Ok maybe she was a little.

"We need to get Tyler out of here" she says instead. "In case he does something dumb and gets himself killed"

"Well that's your problem Barbie."

They swirl past Klaus and Elena again and she catches a snippet of their hushed conversation.

"Could you?" Elena is asking in a hard serious voice.

"For her" Klaus responds his own voice barely more than a growl. "I could. I would try"

She hears no more because Tyler is suddenly there at the door, wearing a tux and scanning the room for her. She breaks free of Damon and goes to him trying to stay just far enough away that Klaus scent is lost among the haze of smells in the room.

"Ty, what are you doing here, I thought you had a game"

"I did," he moves closer and takes her in his arms. "I rushed back for a dance with my best girl"

She giggles, nervously aware that it's only a matter of time before he smells Klaus. He stiffens "Did he make you dance with him?"

"Ty it's no big deal ok, don't worry about it," she holds him firmly. "Look the whole original family are here, you can't start anything or it'll be a blood bath. Just dance with me ok"

He does, stiffly with his eyes constantly burning into Klaus who ignores him and dances with the leggy brunette from earlier. She notices, despite the stress of the moment, that he holds his body slightly apart from the woman, and can't help but be glad.

"We should go" she says when the intensity of Tyler's angry stare draws an amused laugh from Kol who's knocking back whisky by the bar and who she doesn't trust not to say something inappropriate.

"Yeah"

"Look you go, I'll just say bye to the girls and meet you in the car." He hesitates and she clutches his forearms. "Please Ty, Kol is getting drunker and drunker if he kicks off we need Klaus to stop him, not sit back and watch just to spite you. Please"

"Fine"

Tyler leaves and she heads towards Elena. "Thanks" she says without preamble.

"You're welcome, listen Care you have to tell Tyler"

"Elena I-" she starts but Elena holds her eyes with that doe eyed gaze that is impossible to resist

"You have to tell him the truth about you and Klaus"

"What?" she gives a shrill forced laugh and then because Elena is looking patient and understanding and in her own gentle way completely uncompromising she deflates. "How did you know?"

"You're my best friends Care, so is Bonnie and Jer is my brother. I know when you're all lying and lately you always seem to be lying about Klaus."

She sighs and buries her face in her hands feeling shamed.

"I wish you could have told me," Elena says gently touching her arm.

"I wanted to, I did" she feels her lip tremble. "But I know how much you hate him and I couldn't bear for you to hate me"

"I'll never hate you Care," her friend tells her with so much conviction that she has to believe it. "I love you, no matter how terrible your choices"

"Thanks Elena" she hugs her friend.

"But you have to tell Tyler" Elena insists.

"It'll be awful," she whispers fighting back the beginnings of tears.

"Yeah it will"

"Not helpful Elena" she rolls her eyes. "Fine I'll tell him, just as soon as I find the right moment"

"Care," Elena sounds like she's going to lecture here so she cuts in.

"No Elena I will I promise, I just need to pick the right time"

They both know that she's stalling what they don't know is that the right time is coming faster than either could imagine.

 **A/N So i took some liberties with Aurora's history, she's not going to be significant it just suited my purposes to do so.**

 **Hope you enjoyed throw a girl a scrap or two of feedback if you have the time**

 **xxx**


	15. Crawling Home

**A/N So here's some good news in the world of the bear: I got myself a beta reader, whoohoo. The very generous** **garglyswoof offered to help out and I pounced like a tiger on the offer. So now we have much improved grammar and lots of great suggestions and help improving the writing here and there. So big thanbky very much and sloppy kisses (whether she wants them or not) to garglys :-)**

 **And in other happy news this story has hit the magic hundred reviews, thanks so much to everyone who's reviewed you too must endure the sloppiest of kisses**

 **Crawling home**

Tyler fumes all the way back from the Founders' Ball. She sits meekly in the passenger seat while he drives too fast with sharp, erratic twists of the wheel and rough, quick gear changes. She wants to tell him to slow down but she doesn't want to unleash the anger bubbling inside him just yet.

He takes her home and when they're inside he opens his arms and pulls her close; she hears him take a few deep calming breaths.

"You ok babe?" he asks, gently squeezing her body against his own.

"I'm fine Ty," she says, untangling herself from his embrace and smiling at him in what she hopes is a relaxed, unaffected way. "Seriously it's no big deal. So long as no one's getting hurt I can deal."

"But you shouldn't have to Care and you won't have to." His face splits into a bright excited grin. "Look, I was holding off telling you but I _think_ I've, no I've _definitely_ , found a way to put Klaus down."

"What?" her heart hammers and her voice comes out just the tiniest bit shrill.

"That pack I ran with in the Appalachians, they have this shaman who-"

"Tyler stop," she breaks in - she doesn't want to hear whatever he has to say. "Just stop talking. Do you not remember what happened last time you tried to take Klaus down? It's madness ok? You can't-"

"But I can, Care." He grips her shoulders and looks at her with a confident joy in his eyes. "This will work I know it will-"

"No." she snaps. She has to steer him away from this he could get himself killed and Klaus - an image of him grey and desiccated flashes through her mind and she feels almost physically sick. "Look Ty, I know that you hate him, but going after him won't bring back your mom or the hybrids, it'll just get you killed. Carol wouldn't have wanted you to do this."

"I'm not doing it for revenge Care, I'm doing this for you. I can't bear to see him sleazing all over you all the time after what he did to you," he looks determinedly into her eyes. "You shouldn't have to deal with it, ever."

"You want to kill Klaus for me?" she chokes out and another wave of nausea hits.

"Yes." He takes her hands in his. "You'll be free of him, we'll all be free of him."

She's silent for a long time. She looks at her pale hand clasped in Tyler's strong, darker one and she knows she's out of time. She swallows hard and prepares herself for her confession. "Don't, Tyler," she whispers without looking up. "Don't do it for me."

"Why not?" She hears more than confusion in his voice, there's suspicion there too and she looks up, steeling herself.

"Because I don't want you to," she says simply and thinks that will be enough, surely Tyler must have known, deep down he must have known something was wrong.

"I can do it babe," he insists. "I promise I won't get beaten."

She scrunches her eyes closed and tries again. "I still don't want you to."

"Why the hell not?" He looks confused but there's a hint of anger in his voice that she thinks might point to that subconscious knowing.

"Because if you go ahead with whatever hare-brained scheme you've concocted, then one of you will end up gone and I'm not okay with that." _Time to be brave_ she thinks and draws in breath nervously. "I'm not okay with losing either of you."

Tyler still looks confused but underneath she sees that he isn't as surprised as he would like to believe he is. How could he not have felt the distance, she realises now, she's been slowly putting between them? "What are you talking about Caroline? How can you say that? The son of a bitch has been manipulating you for weeks," he says urgently clutching her hands, clutching her lie still tighter. "Shit, he raped you for god's sake."

"No Ty," she pulls her hands from his and runs them through her hair. "He hasn't and he didn't."

Tears that are already falling freely from her eyes start to form in his own and he shakes his head in denial. "Care, I don't understand, he told me-"

"He lied, ok," her voice rises. "I knew it was him, I always knew."

"You fucked him?" Tyler looks like he's about to be sick and then, with pain swirling biliously in his eyes he asks. "In my body?"

When she hears it like that, it sounds terrible. It _was_ terrible. What a shameless way to behave. How could she do something so low? She wonders and her tears become sobs of self-loathing and regret. "Yes," she croaks.

Tyler turns away and sinks down on the bed looking shell-shocked and heartbroken.

"Tyler," she murmurs and reaches out to comfort him.

"Don't touch me," he grinds out quietly, but she can't stop herself from trying. "I said don't," he snarls and surges towards her with his hybrid features showing. She shrinks away from him and watches through her tears while he sits on her bed and cries.

"And you've been seeing him, since you came back?" His eyes flash angry gold. "Are you screwing him?"

"No, no, I swear, it was just that one time," she chokes. "But yes I've been seeing him, just as friends I promise. Tyler I am so sorry, I-"

"Shut up Caroline," he bites out. "Don't tell me you're sorry unless you fucking mean it."

"Of course I mean it," she pleads, her hands pressed together in imitation of a prayer. "God, I hate myself for hurting you."

Tyler looks at her and she can see conflict in his eyes before he asks in a broken voice, "so you'll stop seeing him?"

"What?"

"Simple question Care," he growls, her response clearly not what he'd been looking for. "If I stay, if I try to forgive you and put this shit behind us, will you give him up?"

It should be the easiest question in the world to answer. Should she give up her strange, tentative friendship with that ancient monster for the undeserved forgiveness of her first love? Of course. Will she? She hesitates until hesitation becomes her answer and Tyler tugs at his own hair. "Jesus, Caroline."

"I'm so sorry." It's useless but it's all she has so she throws it at his feet one last time. "Tyler-" she reaches for him again but he stands and moves away. With one last hurt reproachful look he goes and all she can do is sink onto her knees and cry.

"Caroline?" Klaus asks worriedly as he pulls open the door. "Sweetheart, what's wrong?"

She knows she looks a wreck, she'd cried for a good half an hour on her bedroom floor before finally gathering the courage to get up and go to Tyler's house where she'd found the contents of his chest of drawers in disarray and his duffel bag and car gone. She hadn't been surprised but still she'd looked at his empty room and imagined him running once more from Mystic Falls. Running not from Klaus this time but from her and all the pain she's caused him.

Coming here had been impulsive and natural and she hadn't even considered going anywhere else. Klaus' hand settles on her back and he leads her to the couch and sits them down side by side. "Caroline, love?" his voice is soft and questioning and she knows this was the only place she could have come and found any sort of solace.

She doesn't answer, doesn't know how to form the words, she just crawls into his lap and buries her face in his neck. She sniffles and he rubs her back and strokes her hair and murmurs nonsensical comfort into her skin. "Hush love, it's alright sweetheart"

Eventually she speaks from her safe home buried in the crook of his neck. "He's gone. Tyler's gone."

"Oh love," he rubs her back a little more vigorously. "I'm sorry. Why'd the idiot leave you? Hmm?"

"He found out." She sniffs loudly. "About us I mean."

He's silent for a second. "Did Rebekah or Kol-"

"No," she interrupts before he can misdirect his anger. "I told him. I had to." Finally she raises her face so she can look at him. "He was going to try and hurt you," she says in a hoarse broken voice, the thought of him hurt choking her even more than her loss. "He wanted you dead."

"Sweetheart I could have handled Tyler, you didn't have to-"

"Yeah I did." She chews her lip. "It was time, I hated lying to him about what happened, and about you and I being," she pauses, "friends"

He pulls her back into his body, tucks her under his chin and wraps her up in the safety of his arms. "I'm sorry sweetheart, I never meant to cause you pain."

"I know," she shuffles her body in an attempt to get closer, instinctively seeking the warmth of him. "I knew this was coming, I knew it couldn't last. God why does it hurt so much?"

He sighs and tangles a hand in the hair at the nape of her neck. "First love is that way sweetheart, particularly first love as a vampire. That love carves a hole inside us that isn't easily filled, that can ache for centuries."

She lets that sink in for a moment then she asks softly. "Like Aurora?"

He gives a huff of mirthless laughter. "Indeed. Centuries later seeing her still left me shaken. You may see Tyler a month, a year, even a century from now and you too will not be unaffected. We immortals cannot so easily move on."

She's silent and his thumb circles hypnotically against the skin over her collarbone. "But," he continues speaking softly in her ear, his voice deep and earnest. "You will love again Caroline; eventually you will feel something even stronger, deeper, than that first love." He pauses to kiss her hair. "It may take a millennia but it does happen, eventually."

He's talking about her, she hears it in the solemn timber of his voice, feels it in the reverent touch of his fingers. She raises her head, brushing her cheek against his and pulls back only enough so that she can look into his eyes, their noses almost touching, the air she breathes out he takes in and she tastes whiskey on it as it returns to her. She wants him to kiss her so very much, wants him to swallow all her pain and regret into his mouth and drive out her sorrow with the rough skin of his fingertips [1] across her skin.

He does kiss her, but not on her mouth as she hopes. He kisses the wetness from her cheeks with lingering, loving brushes of his lips and on her closed eyes places sweet chaste kisses. "You'll be ok Caroline," he tells her again and she nods and opens her eyes.

"I know," she wants to tell him that the possibility of loving again feels far closer than a millennia away, but now isn't the time for that. Still, the thought of leaving the warm circle of his arms is intolerable, so she ducks shyly down again and mumbles into his chest: "Can I stay?"

He doesn't answer, simply stands and carries her snuggled against his body up to his bedroom. In his bed, curled like a cat against his chest, she feels closer to content than she has any right to be. She reminds herself that Tyler is out there somewhere, away from his home and his friends, alone and in pain because of her and she has no right to be happy tonight.

Still, when Klaus falls asleep and she can lift her head to watch his handsome face turn boyish as he relaxes, she can't help but smile and touch his cheek before she follows him.

She wakes alone and looks around groggily, feeling distinctly like something died in her mouth. "Klaus," she calls softly but he doesn't answer so she flops back down on the bed and notices, framed on his bedside table, the polaroid photograph of the two of them that she took the day they painted together.

She looks ridiculously happy with her arm flung around him and her painting proudly propped against them. She picks it up and runs her fingers over the image. _He keeps it by his bed_ , she thinks, and her heart flutters girlishly at the thought.

"Morning love." He appears with a cup of coffee and a blood bag on a silver tray. He notices the picture in her hands and looks bashfully away.

"Hi," she says, awkwardly putting the picture back and shuffling across the bed to make room for him. "Coffee and blood, my hero."

He smiles minutely. "How are you doing love?" he asks once he's laid the tray beside her in the spot where she'd hoped he'd settle his own body.

"I'm okay," she says unconvincingly. "Horribly guilty and terrified of facing everyone, but other than that just peachy."

"Your precious little troop of misfits will be fine, Caroline. You've all had plenty of practice forgiving each other." He gives her a half smile and she can't help but smile back a little. "They won't hold a single mistake against you no matter how much they may hate me."

She nods then after a moment's silence bites her lip. "It was a mistake, the forest I mean."

He swallows and his eyes find the floor. "Of course," he says stiffly and stands to go, hurt written in every line of his body.

"Klaus, wait." She moves the tray to the other side of the bed and pats the space beside her. "Come here."

He hesitates, torn it seems between his desire to be close to her and the safety of the walls she can see him drawing around himself. "You should rest, Caroline," he says eventually and moves away.

"Klaus, wait, Jesus let me finish," she snaps and he freezes with his back to her, shoulders tense, unwilling to turn around. "It was a mistake," she repeats softly and slips from the bed. "I was with Tyler, and you'd hijacked his body; it was really, really wrong. I took something I wanted just because I thought I could get away with it - how selfish is that? But.."

He's listening but his back is hard and tense, braced almost as though he's waiting for a blow to land. She thinks of how many times he must have braced himself against Mikael's fists, about all the pain he's borne in the centuries since. She doesn't want to be the cause of any more of it.

She runs her hand gently up his back, feeling the taut muscles tick and jump beneath her palm. "It was a mistake, but I don't regret it."

He still doesn't turn around so she wraps her arms about his waist and lays her head on his back. "I don't regret any of it. Not that day, or betraying you, or even you killing me. I don't regret a single thing because without all that I wouldn't know you. Not _villain_ you, but _you_ you."

He's still and silent for a long time and she's about to release him when his hands cover hers over his stomach. "I'm not worth any of that love."

He gently peels her hands away and puts some distance between them as he turns. "I am truly sorry, Caroline, for all of it. I never meant to hurt you."

"I know, you told me that, and I told you that I don't regret it-"

"But perhaps you should, perhaps you'd best stay a-"

"Don't!" she cuts in. "Are you really going to tell me to stay away from you right now? Seriously?"

"Is my friendship worth this Caroline? Worth losing Tyler, alienating your friends, worrying your mother?"

"Yes," she snaps. "Look, I already made this choice when I told you we were friends. I made it again last night when Tyler gave me his ultimatum." She doesn't elaborate on what that ultimatum was, it's reasonably obvious she assumes. His mouth opens but no sound comes out and it closes again and her lips quirk at the endearing hesitation. "Yes, your friendship is worth it and no, I will not give you up, not for Tyler, not for my friends, not even for my mom. They are gonna have to get used to it and so are you because I'm not going anywhere."

"Caroline-" he starts but she lifts a finger and glowers a silent command for him to let it go.

"Now I'm all gross and miserable and I want to hear stories while I drink my coffee so come back to bed," she says and realises only after the words are out how intimate that sounds. She scrambles back into the bed and he joins her, propping himself against the headboard and opening his arms so she can lean against his chest.

"What sort of stories would you like to hear sweetheart?" he asks, his voice deliberately light. "War, horror, romance?"

"Not romance," she says with a grimace. "Horror me!"

"You sure you won't get nightmares sweetheart," he teases and she rolls her eyes fondly.

"Give it your best shot."

Just then her phone lights brightly on the bedside table and Elena's name fills the screen making her cringe. Reality is calling and she wants nothing more than to ignore it, lie in his arms, and let his voice flow like balm over her raw skin.

The screen goes black again after a few more rings. He looks at her questioningly, then his pocket vibrates against her and he fishes out his own phone. She shakes her head but he just raises his eyebrows and answers anyway.

"Doppelganger," he greets neutrally, "to what do I owe the pleasure?"

She hears Elena's worried voice asking if he's seen her and she shakes her head.

He ignores her. "She's right here," he says and hands her the phone.

"Bastard," she mouths and glares at him as she answers. "Hey, Elena."

Her friend's questions come out in a river of worried words. "Caroline, are you ok? I've been calling all morning. Matt told me Tyler left. What happened? Did you tell him? I went to your place but I couldn't find you."

"I'm ok Elena." Sure, she hadn't wanted to face her friends but Elena's concern is almost tangible through the phone and she remembers that these are the people that love her unconditionally and Klaus is right about one thing: They'll forgive her.

"Do you want to come over and talk?" Elena shifts in her chair, the rustling loud in the phone's speaker.

She wants to say no. What she wants to do is hide in Klaus' bed all day, safely cocooned in his arms where she won't have to feel dreadful for hurting Tyler and lying to her friends or explain where she spent the night.

"Um, I don't know," she stalls and gropes for an excuse. "I'm no fun right now Elena."

"Care, I'm not expecting fun," Elena chides her gently. "You just broke up with your boyfriend and you need girl talk and ice cream, please come over."

"You should go love," Klaus says, and his hand runs reassuringly up her arm to squeeze her shoulder.

Elena hears him and pounces. "Yes you should," she wheedles a little playfully. "Come on Care, Klaus might be your friend now but does he even have any Häagen-Dazs?

She laughs then and feels all her love for the brunette flow to her eyes where tears form at the gentle acceptance. "Ok, I'll be over in an hour, once I wash off all the icky."

Insecurity hits her as she hands Klaus back his phone and she covers it with brittle joking. "If you wanted to get rid of me-"

"I didn't," he cuts in and his hand, still on her shoulder, moves so his thumb can once again rub circles on her collarbone. It feels familiar, like it's their thing. "I don't. But you need to face them. Go to the doppelgänger, you can make up over ice cream and cry over Tyler. All will be forgiven by day's end, you mark my words."

She nods and flops back down on the bed pulling him with her. "Just five more minutes," she mumbles cajolingly and he chuckles and pulls her close.

"Whatever you want, love."

She uses his shower and it should not make her feel the way it does. She scolds herself for being so affected by the smell of his shampoo when she should be too miserable over Tyler to notice anything.

His shower gel has a generic masculine scent, but it's the same one she smelt on him last night and the smell that comforted her then fills her nostrils now with a reminder of his skin that makes her pulse skip and her cheeks flush.

Before she can control her thoughts she's picturing him stepping into the hot spray behind her and her belly buzzes as her mind replaces her hands with his. Even his hybrid senses won't smell her arousal from inside the shower, she thinks, and if she's very very quiet he won't know.

Her hand slips between her legs. He's in the next room and that makes this feel illicit and secretive and her heart beats wildly in her chest. She hasn't done this while thinking about him since the night after the forest. Before that, if she's honest, he'd been her bread and butter. She'd embraced that chick magazine reassurance that fantasies are just that and you shouldn't feel guilty for mixing in a bad boy now and then or, in her case, pretty much always.

But after she'd been with him she hadn't done it anymore. Not that she hadn't wanted him - she's wanted him more in the last six months than ever - but she'd avoided letting herself fantasise about his touch. Not just because of how guilty she'd felt for cheating on Tyler, but because the lines between them had seemed too blurred. Friendship had touched the hatred of their first meeting and desire had entwined with revulsion. Under all of it, as she'd become closer to him, something was pressing against those boundaries, something too much like longing for her to admit

She bites her lip and tries to control the volume of her breathing as she works her body and loses herself in the smell of his shower, the vivid memory of the heat of his body pressed against hers, and an image of an intimacy that's possibility both terrifies and exhilarates her.

She'd forgotten how much thinking about him turns her on and it doesn't take long before she's shuddering around her own fingers and saying his name over and over silently in her mind.

She blushes when she steps out of the bathroom a little while later, fully clothed and ready to face what she knows will be a trying day. He's sitting on the bed with his ankles crossed and a leather-bound book in his lap and when he glances up she fancies his look is knowing and amused. She drops her head and scurries to the dresser where her bag sits.

"Ok," she says pretending to rummage through her bag as she waits for her blushes to fade. "Time to face the music."

"Alright love," she hears him stand. "If they give you a hard time I'm very happy to kill the lot of them. Damon I'm especially ok with bringing to a spectacularly bloody end."

"Aw," she turns to face him and smiles a sugary smile. "That is so sweet"

He smirks and the pull of his full lips catches her eye. _Does he have to be so darn pretty?_ she thinks petulantly. She's supposed to be upset, not borderline horny.

"Ok, leaving now," she says and makes for the door, where she stops and looks at him over her shoulder. "Thank you," she offers softly and he nods.

"You're welcome, love," he says solemnly and she straightens her back, lifts her chin and steps out of the sanctuary of his room to face her friends.

You can get away with it like it is, but it would be better to have a verb here.


	16. Music Time

**AN: oh its been so long i have been a bad bad author. (i have excuses honestly but i won't bore you)**

 **Anyway i am back AND I got nomination for this story at the Klaroline awards, so whoop and yay to that :-) Go check it out tehr earelinks to a few really great fics on there.**

 **Thanks as always to the awesome gargsleywoof who edited the chapter for me :-)**

 **Music Time**

"Care." Elena pounces as soon as she enters the boarding house. "Are you ok?"

She smiles weakly at the brunette. "I'm ok."

Elena draws her to the living room, fluttering about her like a concerned moth insistently banging against a light bulb. "Tell me what happened," she commands when they sit together on the sofa, feet drawn up under them.

She sighs; rehashing her breakup doesn't hold much appeal especially given all the Klaus-based implications, but Elena is her best friend, so she picks at last night's nail polish and decides to be honest.

"I told Tyler about me and Klaus. I had to; he was hatching some suicidal plan to put Klaus down that was almost one hundred percent guaranteed to get him killed. All because I'm an uber-ho who slept with Klaus and let him cover for me by telling my boyfriend it was rape."

"Oh Care." Elena looks shocked and disappointed.

"I know, I know." She drops her head into her hands, burying her fingers in her silky hair. She had thought she would be able to hold her head up and tell her friends what she'd told Klaus that morning; that he matters to her and she won't apologise for it, but she's behaved so badly she finds that the cold facts shame her. "God, what is wrong with me? How could I do that to Tyler?"

Elena doesn't have an answer, looking a little dazed by the sordid depths of her admission.

"Do you hate me?" she asks brokenly and her friend's eyes focus quickly.

"No," Elena says decisively. "No. Never. Care, you're my best friend and I love you."

Tears gather and she blinks them away and grasps gratefully at the brunette's hand. "I'm sorry, I know he's done so much to hurt you-"

"Truly true, blondie bear." Damon's light tone barely covers the simmering rage beneath. "Nice morals there, former judgey."

"Damon," Elena scolds lightly. "Girl talk, go away."

She looks past Elena to glare at the elder Salvatore and he narrows his eyes in response.

"Please, Damon," Elena asks, and just like that he bends to her will and melts away. It reminds her of how Klaus acquiesces so readily to her own desires. They're not as dissimilar as they'd like to think, Damon and Klaus - both vicious, both selfish, both unyielding in their defence of those they love - and when in love, both capable of so much more.

"Sorry," she says again, thinking she shouldn't have been so hard on Elena. She offers her friend a wan smile which is returned with a deliberate peppiness that sits strangely on the doppelganger's face.

"Ok!" Elena slaps her palms down on her knees. "Enough sorry. We all make mistakes and we move on." Elena gives a teasing look. "Not all of sex-with-Klaus magnitude but nevertheless-"

"Ha ha." Warmth floods her chest and she smiles. In spite of everything, her friend's love is a constant she can rely on and she wouldn't give it up for the world.

"So-" Elena draws out the word, making her wait nervously for what comes next. "Tyler's gone and you're sleeping over at Klaus'. Are you guys together?"

The question is asked neutrally but she sees discomfort in her friends' eyes. "No." She tries to sound emphatic but it comes out a bit conflicted and Elena's expression turns knowing.

"Hey," Bonnie's voice startles her and she looks up to see the witch in the doorway.

"I called Bonnie," Elena declares unapologetically and flashes from the room leaving her smiling awkwardly at the witch.

Elena returns with a large tub of double chocolate Häagen-Dazs, three spoons, and a determined, unnatural smile. "Sit," she commands and she does with her friends flanking her and the cold tub plonked in her lap. "Tell us everything."

So she does, a frank and full disclosure starting in the woods, though her stomach churns and she can't look at either of them as she admits what she did that day. She tells them about what it was to be dead, to hate the hybrid and to watch him fight to save her. She even talks about Mikael, remembering Klaus' fragile courage the night he fought his father for her. She tells them about the growing friendship between them and the lies she let Klaus tell for her and how it led Tyler so close to a misdirected vengeance she could not allow.

They're all silent for a long time after and it makes her impatient with nervousness. "Well?" She raises her eyebrows. "Get it over with - tell me I'm a terrible person, tell me Klaus is a monster, give it to me straight."

Her friends look at each other and she huffs. "Seriously," she insists. "Don't hold back, tell me what you think."

Bonnie looks pained and glances at the doppelganger before answering carefully. "I think Tyler left you and all you've talked about is Klaus. I think you're getting yourself in serious trouble here, Caroline. Klaus is-"

"Bonnie," Elena interrupts. "We agreed, no judging."

Bonnie lifts both hands and shakes her head. "Not judging, just facts. Do you really think he can change, do you think he even wants to?"

Bonnie directs the question at her but it's the doppelganger that has an answer. "He told me he'd try-"

"Wait, what?" she sputters. "You talked to Klaus about this, about me? When?"

"At the founder's ball when I danced with him," Elena explains without any apology in her tone. "I had to make sure he wasn't playing you."

"Wow, this is getting way outta hand, Klaus and I are just friends - the third degree about his intentions seems a little over the top don't you think?"

"Really? Just friends?" Bonnie gives her a scathing look. "Where did you sleep last night?"

She runs her hands through her hair and takes a calming breath. "I was miserable so I went to a friend, ok? I'm not with Klaus."

"But you want to be." Elena phrases it like a statement, not a question. "Eventually that's where this is going."

 _Of course it is_ ; her friends all know it but she's not quite ready yet to acknowledge it out loud. "I don't know."

"Sure you do." Bonnie's voice is sharp and impatient where Elena's had been soft and understanding and she feels like they're good-cop-bad-cop-ing her. "You know if you don't stay away from him you'll end up with him, and that's dangerous, Care. He's dangerous."

"Not to me," she insists before she can stop herself. That argument hadn't worked on her mother and it doesn't seem to hold much sway with Bonnie now but she pushes on. "I know it seems crazy and Klaus has done terrible things but," she pauses and voices the impossible but almost certain, truth: "Bonnie, I think he loves me."

Bonnie sighs sadly, pityingly perhaps, and nods. "I think so too."

It feels like a victory, like an argument won. Elena smiles softly - she's such a romantic, that girl, but Bonnie is not and she has more in her arsenal. "He also loves Rebekah and he's daggered her any time she's tried to leave him, his brothers too if they piss him off. Right now he's all charm but he's a maniac, Caroline. If you try to leave him someday, what then? He keeps his own siblings in boxes. If you make him angry what will he do to you?"

"He-" she doesn't really have an answer and even if she did Bonnie cuts her off.

"Caroline, being with Klaus is a life sentence at best and a death sentence at worst. You have to see that."

She falters because she can see where her friend is coming from, the logic of the argument. But in her gut, in her heart, she feels differently. "I don't," she insists stubbornly. "I see someone who can be saved and I'm not giving up on him, I can't."

Bonnie shakes her head, pity written all over her face. "Then you're an idiot."

"Seriously?" she snaps. "Get out of my way."

"Elena might buy your 'just friends' act but I know a love-struck blonde when I see one." Damon's lips curl and she can sense the anger boiling under the surface; funny, she hadn't thought he'd be he one to rage over this. "I figure you're on your way over to make snuggly with your new wolf boy."

"I am not doing this with you," she grinds out and tries to step around the dark vampire.

Damon steps into her path again. "Not so fast Blondie, you and I need to have a chat."

She grinds her teeth, she'd fled the boarding house with only one destination in her mind and now Damon is standing between her and Klaus and she has zero patience for it. She tries again to step around him.

"Way I see it," he says as he blocks her path once more. "You and Klaus only spells trouble for the rest of us, so cool your jets and don't start something that could get your friends, specifically Elena, killed when you inevitably can't finish it."

She spreads her fingers wide in an exasperated gesture. "Damon does it occur to you, ever, that something could not be about Elena?" she asks.

"No." He grabs her arms roughly and tries to spin her around.

"Get off me," she snarls and tries to pull away with an angry jerk that doesn't trouble his grip. "Or I swear to God I will tell Elena what you did to me."

Damon's gorgeous blue eyes narrow and he pauses thoughtfully for a second. "You wouldn't," he says confidently after a beat. "You haven't yet."

"No, because I love Elena and Stefan and I don't want to hurt them. _You_ on the other hand -" She snatches her arm away finally and glares at Damon. "You I'm totally fine with hurting."

Black lines ripple menacingly under Damon's eyes and she remembers vividly what it is to fear him. "Ambitious, Barbie. You wouldn't stand a chance."

"I guess not." She takes a shaky breath and plays humble for a moment. "Please Damon, let me go. ok? I've had a bad day and Klaus is just the best listener." She feels her own expression set as she delivers the threat with its flimsy veil. "I feel like I could tell him absolutely anything, you know?"

Damon steps back a flash of uncertainty, maybe even fear in his eyes. He knows as well as she does what Klaus would do with the knowledge of how Damon used and abused poor human Caroline for blood and sex. "You want to turn this into a war, Damon?" she spits, "remember who actually has the big guns on their side."

She steps past him unimpeded and feeling victorious, but his voice stops her a stride or two later. "Don't be an idiot, Caroline. This infatuation with you won't last. How long before all your friends are dead and you're lined up in a coffin with the rest of his family?"

She keeps walking but his words echo Bonnie's so perfectly that she has to remind herself that she has faith in Klaus, that she knows him and they don't, that she isn't a fool.

She doesn't call his name as she wanders into the mansion, feels so much a part of his life now that she's comfortable just walking in. She glances around at the tasteful decoration, the canvases on the walls, whiskey on the table - all the things that mark this place as his - and she smiles tiredly.

She hadn't come straight here after her run in with Damon, instead veering back towards the centre of town hoping to catch her mother at the station. She'd had no intention of discussing Tyler or Klaus with her mother, but just the thought of spending time with her had been comforting.

But her mother wasn't there, a 'serious incident' apparently, so half an hour of aimless wandering later she'd found herself at his door, looking for god knows what. Reassurance most likely, or maybe just _him;_ because lately, despite all her protestations about them being just friends, he seems to be pretty much the entire focus of her mind.

She hears him speaking lowly and follows the sound down a small flight of stairs to find him standing before an expensive mahogany casket. "Sleep well little brother." She catches the last of his murmured words before her disbelieving gasp draws his attention.

"Caroline." She doesn't have a spare brain cell to analyse his exhausted, but almost relieved tone, not with her mind filled to bursting with one thought. _They were right_. Just hours ago she was hearing about his wickedness from all sides, reminders of how little his love means, how easily it turns to wrath and spills out in murder and daggering. No one is safe from his volatile rage, not her friends, not his hybrids, not even his beloved siblings - and certainly not her.

She makes an inarticulate noise and turns to flee, feet loud on the stairs, heart low in her gut. "Caroline!" He catches her before she's anywhere near the door. "Sweetheart, what's the matter?"

She glares at him and tries to pull away but his grip is unyielding. "Bloody hell Caroline, tell me what's wrong."

"You," she snaps and jerks herself free. " _You're_ wrong. God I can't believe I was defending you today. No wonder they called me an idiot. What kind of idiot believes that you of all people can be fixed?"

He narrows his eyes and leans back a little to look at her, face tightening before he speaks. "Tell me then, love. What have the self-righteous hypocrites of Mystic Falls accused me of today?"

"Oh I don't know. Maybe that you're an unstable sociopath with no concept of what it means to actually love anybody." Her hands gesture erratically as she speaks and she knows her voice is shrill and overwrought. . "God, what was I thinking, how could I have thought that-"

She cuts herself off before she can say too much, admit too much about what she'd hoped might be possible between them. But if he is anything, he is smart and predatory; his eyes narrow and he steps forward, anger and energy buzzing about him.

"What had you thought, Caroline?" he asks in a voice dangerous in its calmness. "Tell me love, had you found yourself wanting something from me?"

He must know how she's been tumbling towards him these last weeks. He can't have missed the softening in her heart; she knows it's been written in every soft look they've shared, in every touch she hasn't been able to resist when she's close to him. Still, she can deny it now and walk away from this madness. She thinks of how glad he had been to have Kol back and now he lies daggered in a coffin. All her friends' warnings chime true in her mind and she knows she has to walk away despite the pain sinking in her chest at the thought.

"I don't want anything from you." She sounds unconvincing even to her own ears, but turns to leave anyway, because if she has to see that flash of pain in his eyes bloom into the sparkle of his pretty tears she thinks that perhaps she'll never be safe from him.

He's in her path and it's something nastier than tears in his eyes, something hurt and vicious. "Funny," he croons with soft poison in his voice, "you seemed to want something this morning." His lips purse showing her his spiteful, playful side and she cringes in realisation of what's coming next. "In my shower."

She closes her eyes, briefly feels her jaw clench. _Of course_ he'd known, what had she been thinking indulging her desire with him so close and so attuned to her? "I'm not doing this with you," she grinds out and he shrugs and smiles that smug, unbothered smile that so poorly veils his pain.

"Oh come on sweetheart, you know all you have to do is ask," he says and she swallows down another bitter rising of regret. It's true, it's always been true, if she asks, she gets. She's asked him for secrecy, for lies, for friendship and he's given them willingly. She asked him to stay and he stayed. She wavers, minutely, and almost, _almost_ softens. Then she thinks of Kol, grey and veined in his silk-lined coffin and remembers that she also asked Klaus to change, to be better, and that he has remained as petty and controlling as he always was.

She's about to tell him to go to hell when his hands find her waist and skate lightly up her sides. He leans in and whispers, "tell me what you want," so close to her ear that his hot breath tickles her cold skin. She bites down on both her lip and the desire to tilt her head a little in invitation. Wanting him is an affliction with her, has been since long before she admitted it to herself, but she isn't a puppet of her desires - she's Caroline Forbes, queen of control.

"I don't want anything from you," she says again in a pretty good imitation of conviction, pushing past him. Their bodies touch all down one side and she can't help the tiny hitch in her breath at the heat of him.

He hears and takes a step towards her so that she finds herself with her back to the wall. He leans in, one hand on the plaster beside her head and his body held just an inch away from hers. He looks into her eyes and very deliberately lays his other hand on her waist, smirking at the way the contact makes a tiny tremble run through her. "Now that's a fib isn't it love?" He smiles, teeth cold and white, eyes angry and hurt. "Perhaps you want this?" He runs a hand teasingly over her hip and down her thigh.

She glares defiantly at him but doesn't move; she's not going to give him the satisfaction of running like a scared child

"No?" He lifts his eyebrows and purses his lips, drawing her gaze against her will. "This?" he moves his hand back up her side until its skirting gently along the underside of her breasts as he lays a hot kiss on her collarbone, right where the circling of his thumb had so recently comforted her.

She shivers and though she can't deny to herself the arousal igniting under her skin she foolishly tries to deny it to him. "Hardly," she spits.

"Liar," he hisses with sudden venom in her ear. "I can _smell_ you."

"Let me go," she growls, face flaming with embarrassment.

"Is that what you want Caroline?" He pushes his body lightly against hers

"Yes."

He shakes his head looking disgusted with her dishonesty but doesn't withdraw and the feel of him is so compelling and her desire is building so quickly that she panics and thrashes against him. "Let me go!" She claws at his face and he has to capture her wrists and pin them above her head to stop her attack, lines of red healing across his face as his eyes flash amber.

"Get off me you monster!"

"Ah that's what you wanted was it, while you brought yourself off in my shower, hmm?" He releases her and she realises somewhere in her mind that his grip had never been all that tight. "To taste the monster?"

"No you bastard," she spits and glares at him. "I wanted to save you."

"Caroline." He steps back, his voice as cracked and fragile as his gaze. "Sweet-"

"Don't!" She raises her hands and shakes her head, fighting hard against the tears behind her eyes. "Just don't," then she does run with fast feet and wet cheeks and his voice calling out to her as she goes.

 **A/N argh a bumpy bump in the road don't hate me for it, i just love the angst too much to make their lives too easy**


	17. A Simple Sorry

**A/N thanky kindly to gargsleywoof and her continuing patience with my poor grammar, careless spelling and bone headed refusal to use Caroline's name in the prose. Star!**

 **A simple sorry**

It hurts; it hurts so much more than she imagined it could. How did she get herself into the situation where fighting with Klaus, losing Klaus of all people, feels like she's taken a shovel to her own chest and dug out her heart?

She feels empty and foolish. How conceited had she been to think she could change him? He's a millennium old, shaped in abuse and fired in cruelty..

He has done terrible things. She's seen how he justifies them. Seen too, when she looks closer, how he despises himself for them. His damage runs a thousand years deep and she, a small town teenager, had thought she could repair it. Idiot!

Yet it tugs at her even now, that call to help him, to look deeper than everyone else and see the man he could be. To take that damn shovel, turn it around and dig him out from under all the misery and grave dirt that she still believes a good man lies buried beneath.

On her wall her painting, _their_ painting, looks down impassively on her misery, its colours rich and soothing. She was half in love with him, she thinks. God, who's she kidding? In the perfect clarity of hindsight she sees how deeply in love with him she's let herself fall, how little caution she's really exercised.

A tear salts her lip and she scrubs at her face with her sleeve and lays down on her bed, ready to surrender to the tears she's been fighting since she ran from him, from them, and from all the hopes she'd built around them.

A loud hammering at the door pulls her back from her misery and shocks her into sitting up with heart beating wildly. It must be him, she thinks, come to plead his case, and part of her is so ready to hear him out. But she has to be strong - all the dire warnings about how loving him endangers her friends, and moreover her mother, fortify her mind and she shouts, "go away" and then in a whisper that he'll still surely hear, "Please just go away."

"Care, what's wrong?" Elena's voice comes moments before the brunette barrels into the room. "Care?" Taking in her tear stained face Elena comes to sit on the bed and she sits up to face her friend with a watery smile.

"Hey."

"Care what is it? We've been calling and calling, something happened this morning at the Grill, did you hear?"

"What? No I haven't heard anything, what happened?" Honestly whatever town drama Elena has come to tell her about will make for easier conversation than admitting that Klaus has just lived up to all their worst opinions of him and left her feeling pretty broken-hearted and extremely foolish.

"Kol." Elena gives a tiny involuntary shudder as she speaks the wildest Original's name. "He just kept drinking after the ball last night; by mid-morning he was really drunk and really angry. He trapped Matt and Jeremy and a load of innocent bystanders at the Grill and started messing with them."

"Jesus, is everyone ok?"

"Yeah, he was toying with them, compelling them to," Elena swallows thickly and looks down, "do stuff, hurt each other and stuff, when your mom got called."

The serious incident from earlier, she realises. Her mom was dealing with Kol's madness and now Kol lies daggered and while she knows exactly what happened, still she has to ask. "What did she do?"

"She called Klaus," Elena says. "He and Elijah came and fetched Kol, but I'm still really scared, Care. If Kol is after Jeremy then I need to get him outta town-"

"You don't," she cuts in and sighs loudly. "It's fine Elena, Jeremy's safe."

"Are you sure, did you speak to Klaus?"

"Yeah." A tear leaks from the corner of her eye and she feels it cut a path down her cheek. "Kol won't be a problem, he's daggered."

"Oh thank God." Elena sags with relief and as fear for her brother recedes she refocuses on her tear stained face.. "Care what happened?"

"I broke up with Klaus, kinda, I mean not that we were together but like a friend breakup I guess."

Elena doesn't speak, she just takes her hand in both of hers and gives her that doe-eyed look that's been capturing hearts for years.

"I saw Kol in his coffin and everything you all said came back and I got scared. I'd been so sure Klaus could be fixed but then I saw he'd daggered his brother and I panicked and said some mean stuff and he said some mean stuff. I told him we were done."

She buries her head in her hands feeling desolate and cold, heart heavy with the end of an affair that never really started. Tears are collecting again and she finds herself apologising in that nonsensical way people do when they're upset. "Sorry Elena, it just hurts so much worse than I thought it could. Sorry."

Elena laughs, soft and musical and full of fondness. "Oh Care. I hate Klaus as much as the next person." The brunette's lips twitch wryly, "Well the next sane person anyway. And I can't believe I'm saying this. But Klaus is crazy about you. If you want him back just go talk to him, apologise, there's no way he wouldn't accept it."

"You're right Elena, thanks." She brightens. Nothing's lost, this is a mix up and a spat and not the end of her and Klaus. She faces herself in the mirror and determinedly sets about fixing her face and hair. "Hey," she stops suddenly and looks at Elena in the mirror. "What's with the 'go get him' advice? You hate Klaus, a lot."

"I do, he's the worst. But _you_ don't hate him Care." Elena tilts her head as she speaks and her dark hair waterfalls over her shoulder. "I know what it's like to fight something because everyone else thinks it's wrong. You can keep denying what you feel, but it'll just make you miserable and I then end it won't work."

She feels a rapier stab of guilt and pulls a pained face. "Oh God, I am a terrible friend! I rode you so hard didn't I?"

Elena smirks. "Little bit."

"Maybe Klaus is my punishment for being such a judgy bitch about you and Damon?" She shakes her head and gives a rueful huff. "Now _I_ get to be the one in love with the worst guy in town. Great."

She's lifting her mascara to her lashes when she sees Elena's surprised expression in the mirror. "Love huh?" Elena shakes her head. "Wow."

She pulls her lip between her teeth. "I don't know, maybe, if he still wants-"

"He wants," Elena assures her. "God this almost feels normal. Boy talk."

"Ha, except the boy is a thousand year-old hybrid with so much emotional baggage he'd need his own freight company to cart it around."

"Yeah, can I just go on record as saying you are crazy? I mean _totally_ crazy." Elena wanders over, chooses a natural pink lipstick and hands it to her. "But he got you and Jeremy back, so he gets some credit. Plus if anyone can fix him, it's Caroline Forbes."

"I love you Elena." And she does, so much.

Elena's smile is gentle and kind and it warms her right to her heart. "I love you too."

Klaus is drinking - no surprise there - when she pushes open the door after a quick light knock.

"Caroline," he greets neutrally and she can almost see the cold grey of his fortress around him.

"Hi."

He looks down into his glass but doesn't speak. so she fills the silence with light bright words. "So I guess my mom has some imaginative paperwork to do today." He doesn't answer, just takes a large gulp of whiskey. "Klaus?"

"Why are you here, Caroline?"

"To apologise," she says, still trying for that light, friendly tone, and he looks up warily. "Maybe grovel a little."

He frowns - he is not easily softened, this man. She supposes he learnt long ago that it is safer to be hard.

"Come on Klaus, I'm sorry ok? I have a boatload of excuses but none of them matter. The point is I didn't even wait to hear your side, I just jumped to conclusions and I'm sorry." He looks at her with tense eyes and she feels doubt crawl up inside her chest. Still, in for a penny in for a pound, so she turns her hips side to side like a little girl and pouts at him. "Forgive me?"

He nods, "It's fine," he says stiffly and turns away, shields up higher than ever.

God he sucks, she thinks, looking at him hiding behind his feigned indifference. He makes it so hard to get through to him in normal, sane ways, but she knows him well enough to know what _does_ work. Prick his anger, snap his temper and he'll be laid open before her, then he'll properly accept her apology, or he won't, but at least she'll know.

"Seriously?" she raises her eyebrows. "I'm trying to apologise for some pretty sucky behaviour and 'it's fine'?"

"What do you want from me, Caroline?"

"I want you to talk to me, geez." She presses her fingertips to her temples. "You just put your brother in a coffin, and instead of being there for you I let all my friends' fears convince me you were just being the same old controlling, irredeemable jerk they think you are. When really it was because my mom-"

"Much as I respect the sheriff, Caroline," Klaus cuts in, "I did not dagger Kol for your mother."

"No you did it for me and I bitched out massively on you, so if you're mad at me be mad, if you're upset be upset. But stop hiding being 'it's fine' and _talk_ to me."

He sighs. "I'm not angry with you, Caroline," he says softly. "You have plenty of reasons to expect the worst of me."

"Yeah well, a good friend would have shown a bit more faith, I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry too love, my behaviour this morning was-"

He pauses awkwardly and she sees an opportunity to get them back on track. "Douche-like in the extreme?" she teases, eyes and voice warm enough to soften the words.

"I was going to say ungentlemanly, but in the modern parlance," he shrugs, "I suppose."

"Ok, so good," she says, and when the silence that follows threatens to become heavy, she grins at him. "You know this is a big step in your friendship training. Making up is a very advanced lesson."

"And how am I doing?" he smiles, more than willing to leave their troubles behind them. Elena was right about how easy it would be to earn his forgiveness.

"Almost there but…" She makes a show of thinking. "Hmm, might be too much for you."

He gives her a questioning look and she spreads her arms. "The make-up hug."

He narrows his eyes but doesn't move and she laughs and raises her eyebrows, keeping her eyes on him until he relents and steps into her embrace. God he feels good, and her relief at their reconciliation is dancing merrily in her heart, making her tighten her arms and hum contentedly.

They hold each other for far longer than a friendly hug should last, and the heat of him - that fierce werewolf heat that warms her cool skin enough to make her feel alive - burns through their clothes and makes desire tick beneath her skin. She's concentrating hard on not giving herself away when he mumbles, with just a hint of uncertainty, into her hair, "Friends, then?"

She should say yes. Because she claims that she wants to save him and the best thing for his redemption is a simple, honest friendship: plain-talking, uncomplicated, and supportive. She should say yes, be his friend and help him find a way to be a better man. But she is not as unselfish as she would like to believe and he had been right; she has found herself, more and more often, wanting something from him. His body against hers thrums with a power older than her civilisation and she teeters between wanting to save him and just plain wanting him.

Turning her head against his shoulder, she catches sight of that mole over his Adam's apple that she's always had a bit of a fascination with and the decision is made. She parts her lips and, with her heartbeat echoing erratically in her own ears, lays them softly over that tiny flaw on his pale skin.

He tenses - every muscle tightens and his breath stills in his lungs. An inch or two higher, tucked under his chin where his jaw and throat meet, there's another mole so she kisses that one too and he trembles. He is one thousand years old, she has seen the evidence of his conquests lined up and immortalised in silks, and yet the simple pressure of her mouth on his skin makes him shiver.

 _'Friends'_ was always a lie. A lie she told so that she could be near him and still pretend to be Tyler's girl. That lie is crumbling now that she has no reasons left to uphold it. Elena knows her heart, Bonnie and Stefan too, and even Damon can guess at it. She's damned if he'll be the last to know.

Still she isn't bold enough to meet his eyes and all the questions she knows they'll ask. So when he tries to pull away she moves with him, keeps her head tucked into his shoulder and flows with him in an unresisting resistance, denying him his answers.

"Caroline." Eventually he can't keep the questions from finding voice and they all meld together into a single word. "What?"

He wants to know what this means, he wants to know the reason her lips are wet against his neck and her heartbeat is echoing about in the room and slamming against their heightened hearing like a confession. Perhaps he's afraid this is pain over Tyler's leaving, perhaps he thinks he's the rebound guy. He's a fool. If he hasn't understood how deep into him she's fallen then all his years on earth have taught him nothing about women, nothing about love.

She runs her hands up his back, makes her touch deliberately sexual - she wants no doubt here as to her intentions. At the back of his neck she finds his hairline and weaves her fingertips through the fine hairs for a moment before taking his head in her hands. She feels daring and commanding, so strong, in this moment of decisiveness and she can't deny that it's a hell of a turn on as she finally lifts her head, tilts his face with her hands and lays her lips, parted and wet, over his.

He moans. He moans like he's being offered heaven and she knows she has the power to make or break this ancient monster, this new man, in her arms. She's ready to claim him, her body pulses with the need to brand herself onto his skin and crown herself his queen.

His lips part under hers, granting her eager tongue access to his mouth, and she almost forgets that there are words she needs to say that are more important than the aching in her belly or the buzzing on her skin.

She exerts her famous control, pushes it to its limits, and pulls away. "Klaus," she murmurs. "Klaus wait."

He comes to, hazily, like waking from a dream, and his blue eyes focus icily on her. So much doubt beneath that behemoth ego and she sees it all in him now. Sees how the gentle pressure of her palms against his chest might as well be a stinging slap on his cheek or a vicious insult. He expects rejection at every moment and has spent a thousand years trying to brick up his heart against the pain of it. That he has failed, that in all that time he has not completely buried his humanity, just strengthens her conviction in what she's about to say.

She smiles at him but he's spooked by her pushing him away and he steps back and sits down. He gives her a close-lipped, unbothered smile, the type he uses when he wants to pretend nothing matters to him, and throws his arms languidly over the back of the sofa.

"Ok," she takes a deep breath and begins nervously, "I really am sorry about the way I reacted earlier."

"I told you it doesn't matter."

"No Klaus, it really does. I should have had faith in you." She bites her lip. "Elena told me what you said, that you'd change, for me."

He snorts. "Ah yes, Miss Gilbert doubted the sincerity of my intentions." He says with a smirk, and then more seriously. "I have little affection for the doppelganger, but her loyalty to you I do admire. And I did mean it, what I told her."

She nods pensively. "I know," she says softly, and hears a little wonder in her own tone. "But you don't have to change for me."

He frowns in confusion and looks up at her questioningly and she rolls her eyes. "Well obviously you have to change what you do, because, well, _awful_. But I don't think people can change who they are, not deep down."

His jaw clenches and she knows he's taking this the wrong way as usual. "I see." His voice is clipped and his eyes are hardening.

"And I wouldn't be here if I thought you needed to," she tells him firmly. "You don't need to change Klaus, you just need to feel safe enough to be what you really are."

"I'm hardly afraid love."

"Seriously? You're the poster child for afraid, Klaus." She has always been more honest than tactful, always a little surprised at how much offence the truth can cause. "You're afraid of rejection, abandonment, betrayal. And sure, most of it's pretty justified given your family history but you've let it turn you into something I know you don't want to be. You're not a monster, Klaus."

He shakes his head and she sees how thinly his scepticism is spread. He wants so much to believe her version of him and she's going to make sure she convinces him. "And what am I love?"

"A good man."

He laughs, startled and incredulous. "Oh love, I haven't been called that in a millennium."

"But you _were_ once," she insists. "When you were human. That's what you were?"

He nods uneasily and she smiles encouragingly and continues. "You can be that again, or at least a hell of a lot closer to it. You just need someone to help you. Someone you can trust to call you on your shit but always, always, be on your side."

He shakes his head, expression dubious. "And you want to be that girl?" he asks.

"God no!" she grins flirtatiously to soften the words and moves towards him. She looks down at him for a second, then places a knee on either side of his thighs and wraps her arm around his neck so she's straddling his lap. "I had plans for my future," she says with faux irritation. "Good plans. Well thought out." Her lips twitch playfully and he watches her with a sort of bemused wonder that's incredibly endearing. "Colour-coded," she says with a serious nod. "And none of those plans involved the epic fixer-upper that is Klaus Mikaelson."

She wriggles further into his lap and looks into his eyes with all the soft sincerity she can convey. "But it's not a question of want. I _am_ that girl."

He looks at her so long that she fidgets, his blue eyes boring into hers as he looks for something to trust. She's at the point of saying something just to break the quiet when he lifts his hands from where they had settled on her hips and slides them up her back to delve into her hair.

"Ok," he says simply, then tips her head with his hands and brings his lips to hers.


	18. Waiting game

**Waiting game**

She storms into the boarding house like a rolling thunderhead, flings down her purse, and throws herself into one of the leather easy chairs with a disgruntled huff.

Elena bites her lip, clearly trying to contain her amusement, and Bonnie gives a short undignified snort of laughter. "Good evening?" the doppelganger asks innocently.

"Perfect," She snaps and glares at her feet as she kicks off the killer heels that have been torturing her toes all evening.

Her friends are laughing in their eyes and Bonnie barely contains her mirth as she asks, "Operation little black dress not a success then?" in a poor approximation of a sympathetic tone.

"Not even remotely," she glowers at her so-called friends. "It is _not_ funny."

"It's a little bit funny," Bonnie disagrees with an amused grin as Elena finally gives in to laughter.

"Great," she crosses her arms over her exposed cleavage defensively. "I'm glad my pathetic excuse for a love life is so amusing for you."

"It's not, Care, I promise it's not," Elena relents. "We're sorry, tell us?"

"Nothing to tell," she sighs. "Again! It was perfect, we ate, we drank, we talked, then he walked me back."

"Really?" Bonnie gaze travels over the clinging satin of her new dress. "I can't believe he resisted that dress."

"Me neither." She strokes the crinkles out of the fabric pensively. "Am I hideous in some way?"

"Of course not Care, you're beautiful and sexy," Elena tells her and, with a quirk of those lovely bowed lips eyes her bosom and mimes with cupped hands high over her own chest. "And God have those always been so-?"

"Wonder bra," she admits. "Urgh, I don't know what I'm doing wrong."

"Care, you're not doing anything wrong," Bonnie assures her. "But you only broke up with Tyler a few weeks ago. God knows I hate giving Klaus credit for anything, but he's doing the right thing here."

"The right thing?" She tosses her hair. "Seriously?"

"Bonnie's right." Elena comes to sit next to her. "It's actually sort of sweet that he wants to go slow and not just leap into bed together."

"Did you just call Klaus sweet?" she asks in disbelief and Elena pulls a face. "I know, ok, I know you're right. But he's just so hot and so charming and so not having sex with me that I may actually explode. Either that or I'm going to hunt down some white oak and put us all out of my misery."

She retrieves her bag from beside the sofa and notices Damon lounging in the doorway wearing an amused sardonic expression. G _reat_. "Here's a crazy idea, before you doom us all," the dark vampire offers, and she can't possibly put into words how much she doesn't want his input on this subject so she just glares at him. "Just tell your sugar that you want some sugar."

All three women turn at once to level him with withering looks, then as one turn back without further[1] acknowledging the suggestion.

"Ooh I have an idea," Elena bursts out. "Graduation is just next week, tell him you want to go away afterwards - then when you check into hotels he'll either have to book separate rooms, which would be weird, or share with you."

"That's brilliant, he'd be totally outmanoeuvred!" She bounces in her chair. "Elena you're a genius!"

"You're scary," Damon states as he turns and walks away.

She rummages in her bag for her casual clothes and Bonnie raises an eyebrow in judgement. "Of course, you'd have to tell your mom about you and Klaus."

That brings her down to earth with a bump and she sits back with her jeans in her lap. "Urgh, she totally freaked about me and Klaus just hanging out together-if she knew that we're dating she'd completely lose her shit."

"Care, she's a cop," Elena points out. "She's going to figure it out."

All the way home she debates how best to tell her mother that she barely waited twenty-four hours after Tyler left before she started dating Klaus. _Dating Klaus_ , even putting the words together makes her shake her head in disbelief. She'd been prepared to be sleeping with Klaus, falling for Klaus, tangled up with Klaus and all his damage and family demons, but she hadn't really considered that she might be _dating_ him.

Three weeks ago she'd climbed into his lap and told him in no uncertain terms that she was ready to be with him, to take him and all his baggage on.

He'd kissed her then making her body burn in response and, with her heart chanting finally finally finally, her greedy hands had gone exploring over and under his shirt until they'd been moaning into each other's mouths and the kisses had turned messy with need.

But when she'd reached, impatient as she was, for his belt, he'd risen, placed her on her feet and, grinning, taken her in his arms and waltzed her around the room till she laughed and felt her heart grow wings to soar above them.

It had taken her a little while to realise he was stalling. The next day, when they'd walked to the falls together with an expensive bottle of Loire Valley Red dangling from his fingers and her arm linked through his, she'd buzzed with anticipation. But when she'd pressed herself brazenly against his body he'd playfully pushed her into the freezing water and dived in after her. They'd swum fully clothed beneath the water longer than humans possibly could and play fought in the shallows like children.

A couple of days later he'd driven her directly to the boarding house after dinner despite some less than subtle hints from her about going back to his place and she'd begun to suspect he was deliberately avoiding going to bed with her.

She'd tested the theory by surprising him at his house after school, dressed casually in tiny shorts and a loose t-shirt that fell off her shoulder. She'd jumped into his lap and they'd kissed until her body had ached all over with desire. There'd been no mistaking his hardness pressing against her thigh or the needy growl rumbling through his chest as she caught his tongue between her teeth and sucked on it. But she'd resolved not to make the first move, again, and his hands hadn't strayed south of her waist. So they'd just made out like teenagers until her mother had called and she'd had to rush home.

And now? Now she's had enough. She knows that everyone's right, that it's sensible to wait. But she's given her heart to Klaus Mikaelson so it's fair to say she left sensible very many exits back, so why hold off on the good stuff?

Her train of thought comes to an abrupt halt at the sight of her house, its lit, inviting windows mocking the less-than-warm reception she knows her upcoming confession will receive inside. She takes a determined breath and pushes through the front door calling out to her mother as she enters.

"Hey sweetie," Liz greets. "You have fun with the girls?"

"Mom can we talk?"

"Oh sure, honey." Her mother stops stacking dishes and takes a seat opposite her at the breakfast bar, a few lines of concern appearing between her brows. "You ok?"

"Yeah. I'm great, I'm _so_ great and really, really happy." She gives her mother an awkward smile. "And can you please try and remember that when I tell you what I have to tell you?"

"Caroline, what-"

"I'm with Klaus." She blurts it out before her courage deserts her and braces herself for her mother's reaction.

Liz eyes her for a second before she asks, too quietly, "What are you talking about?"

"I'm with Klaus," she confirms and then in a rush, "We're dating and I know you're gonna worry about me being with him, but I swear I know what I'm doing and I am so happy."

Liz is silent and stone faced for a long moment, making her daughter fidget nervously and count the deafening beats of her own heart until eventually the sheriff stands. "No," Liz orders. "You will not see that man again Caroline."

She's startled. She'd been prepared for an emotional conversation but her mother is ice cold calm as she forbids her relationship. "Mom-" she begins to protest but her mother raises a hand to silence her.

"We are not discussing it Caroline. Klaus is a murderer and a manipulator and I will not allow you-"

"Seriously? Allow me?" The words come out incredulous and a little too loud and she adjusts her tone to something more reasonable before continuing. "Mom I'm not a kid, I'm not here for permission. I know Klaus doesn't exactly have a stellar record in this town but-"

"But what Caroline?"

"But he can change." She declares her own belief in him, lending the words conviction. "He can be a better man and I'm going to help him. I have to."

Liz shakes her head, her faced pinched with worry and denial. "He is not your responsibility."

"Yes he is Mom." She insists. "Because he saved me and he loves me more than I ever thought anyone could. Because I believe in him and because," she takes a breath and can't stop her lips curling into a tiny smile at saying out loud what is still so fresh and exciting to her. "Because I love him."

"Christ, Caroline." Her mother's voice is harsh and disappointed. "How can you be so naïve? Klaus might be charming, he may even care about you, but don't think for a second that he's anything other than an irredeemable psychopath. You can't help him Caroline, you just need to get as far away from him as possible."

"You're wrong. Please Mom I need you to understand." She leans forward and reaches for her mother's hand. "I have been abused, kidnapped, tortured, and actually killed. I've survived it all because I'm strong. I'm not some dumb teen running off with a drummer ok? I'm a vampire. A vampire that makes a choice everyday not to be a monster and I need you to have faith that I am strong enough to help him do the same."

She's pretty pleased with that speech, thinks for a minute that it will move her mother to understanding. It doesn't. The argument goes round and round, until her head's pounding with frustration and she just has to get away.

She goes to Klaus, of course, and he lets her storm past him and pour herself a scotch without a word.

She turns to him, leans her hip against the drinks cabinet and huffs loudly.

"Everything alright love?" he asks and she gives him a withering look.

"Peachy," she retorts dryly.

"Sweetheart," he steps up alongside her and tops up his own glass. He really does have a bit of a drinking problem, she thinks, wondering distractedly when she last saw him without a glass of something in his hand. "Come now, what brings you back to me so soon?"

"Fight with my mom."

"Ah," he nods. "She discovered your secret then?"

There's something in his voice that's off, something forced in how casually he asks the question and she realises her secrecy has hurt him just a little. "I told her actually," she tells him slightly defensively. "She's pretty pissed, I kinda stormed out."

He gives her a commiserating look. "Sweetheart you can't blame the sheriff for her concern." He smiles a little teasingly. "What mother wouldn't be worried at the thought of a monster defiling their precious daughter?"

She huffs, she's upset and unguarded and the next words, mumbled petulantly into her drink come without proper consideration. "Chance'd be a fine thing."

He pauses his breathing for a beat and narrows his eyes. "Something on your mind love?" he asks stiffly.

She takes a deep breath, presses her lips together and shakes her head. "Nope."

He doesn't take the bait, just watches her and sips his drink. His silence breaks her and the words come tumbling out in a childish, hard done by tone. "Except for the fact my boyfriend is doing everything he can to avoid sleeping with me I'm just _great_."

He opens his mouth and closes it again sharply, leaving her to fill the awkward silence she's created. "Makes me feel like a real babe."

"That's ridiculous. You can't doubt my desire for you."

"Right, you're crazy for me." She nods exaggeratedly as if suddenly realising he's right. "Which totally explains all the sex we've been having, oh no wait-"

He clenches his fists then releases them in a visible effort to restrain his temper. "Caroline." His voice drops and he searches for her gaze but she glowers petulantly into her glass instead as he steps towards her. "Sweetheart -"

Eventually she looks at him and he gives a small tight smile. "Caroline, a few weeks ago you were still embroiled in your great love affair with Tyler. Up until tonight I was a secret kept even from your mother." He wets his lips almost nervously and looks down briefly before meeting her eyes. "This is all very new and it is important to be sure."

"I _am_ sure." She insists. "I'm all extra sure. At this point I'm so sure I think I might actually go blind and -" He looks uneasy and realisation knocks the wind from her body. "And we're not talking about me?"

He doesn't speak but his discomfort is answer enough and she feels distinctly like something kicked her in the stomach. "You're not?" she asks brokenly, "You're not sure?"

He's silent for a few moments and she shakes her head in wounded confusion. "You don't want me?" she asks, sounding small and unsure in her own ears as old neuroses triumph yet again over the strong confident woman she likes to believe she's become.

"I _always_ want you," he insists vehemently. "Every moment with you Caroline is an exquisite torture. But—"

He trails off, leaving her to shake her head in confusion. "Then-?" she leaves the question unfinished and he sighs and twirls his drink as he readies himself to answer her.

"The last time we were together, Caroline, you ran from me in shame and secrecy." He looks at a point over her shoulder as he continues and she's suddenly so very proud of him, of how vulnerable he's allowing himself to be. "After all you have given me since then, I'm not certain I could bear that again."

She's more sure in this moment that he can be saved than ever before and she loves him with a fierce protectiveness that rises up from her belly and fills her chest with warmth. "I'm sorry," she says, because she really can't think of anything else to say.

"Sweetheart, I'm not blaming you for anything, I've caused you and yours far more misery. Which is precisely the reason for exercising caution."

She sits down and he joins her, body touching hers all along their sides. He feels warm and she leans into him and looks up into his eyes. "You're right. I guess this is pretty sudden, but, honestly, I feel like I've been waiting for this, for you, for ages."

He looks pleased and bashful as he drops his eyes, a smile playing over his lips, and she can't resist leaning in to feel their softness under her own. Every touch is electric with him, even this simple brushing of their lips makes her feel charged with desire. But she's determined to be mature about this so she pulls away before she's lost.

"I know that we've got kinda a shitty record for being honest with each other, but I promise you can trust me. I won't hurt you again Klaus." He doesn't look at her, so she cups his cheek with her palm to turn his head in a gesture that feels natural and familiar. "And I won't push, we can wait till you're ready."

He gives a snort of self-deprecating laughter. "Well _that's_ emasculating."

She catches his eye playfully. "Well if you're gonna be such a girl about it."

She sobers quickly and continues. "I'm serious though. You don't have to sleep with me for me to know you love me." She quirks her lips and lightens the heavy moment with a little teasing humour. "Flip side, just cos I love you doesn't mean I'm gonna be patient about it ok?"

His head snaps up and his eyes are startlingly intense as they lock onto hers, making her breath catch. "Oh," she whispers in sudden realisation. "I never said it."

"Caroline?"

It's her turn to look away then, to escape the fierce question in his eyes and draw in air to steady herself. "I told Elena," she says eventually. "And Bonnie, my mom. God I think I even told Damon." She looks back at him and he's rigid. "How could I have forgotten to tell you?"

His gaze bores into her for a few loud ticks of the clock and then there's vice around her middle and a moment of rushing air in her ears. She gives a surprised squeak as her back hits soft cotton and the smell of him surrounds her.

"Kl-" she's cut off by his mouth over hers and his tongue slipping between her lips. She opens her mouth, welcomes him inside with a moan and a sweep of her tongue against his.

The sound of tearing covers the soft moaning coming from her throat and she feels chill air and hot fingers on her skin as his mouth leaves hers to go exploring with kisses acrossher neck and shoulderand his hand shoving her bra aside so he can squeeze her tits eagerly.

She feels giddy; almost wants to laugh at him, to joke at how fast he got sure but God his _hands_. His hands are on her with a greedy purpose she hasn't felt since he wore another man's skin to steal her pleasures in the forest. His kisses are rough and there's a desperate selfishness to the way he crushes her body to his that thrills her.

She comes alive beneath him, grasps at his body with lusty hands and rocks her hips against his making him growl into her mouth. He's wearing too many clothes. His body, despite their time together in the forest, despite the teenage make-out sessions since she called him hers, is still uncharted territory that she has yearned to explore since long before he killed her.

With a dissatisfied noise grumbling in her throat she tugs clumsily at his shirt insisting that it be gone. He complies immediately, propping himself on one hand and reaching the other over his shoulder to strip it off in the sexy one handed motion hot guys all seem to have perfected. She wonders in a brief bizarre moment of thought if the pretty boys get taken aside in high school and taught the moves that'll drive women crazy. Then she remembers he was born before high schools were even imagined and the reminder of just how old he is makes her head spin.

She mumbles his name as he drags blunt human teeth over her jugular even as a distinctly inhuman growl rumbles about in his chest. He is man and monster above her, at once youthful and eager, ancient and knowing. He thrills her, the swirling dark and bright of him making her dizzy so that she clings to him; holds on tight and lets him lavish her neck and breasts with hot open-mouthed kisses.

He takes her nipple into her mouth, rolls it with his tongue and darts of desire shoot from there down into her belly making her stomach muscles contract so that she rises up against his mouth. "Caroline," he gasps as he pulls his mouth away from her breast and searches for her lips again, catching her chin in his haste. A little clumsy, like a boy, in his lust for her.

She's imagined this, him in his own body, so many times. She thought she knew him so well, thought she knew exactly how it would be. How wrong she was.

She imagined herself succumbing to his charm, whisked off her feet, and laid out helpless before a thousand years of skill. She imagined herself seduced. It's not that way at all.

He's so lost. How many women has he had? How many men? His conquests must number in the thousands and yet right now he's grinding against her like a teenager and squeezing her arse with rough,artless hands and an unbridled need that makes her feel like the sexiest creature on the planet.

She finds herself responding in kind, fumbling clumsily with his belt and undulating beneath him in time with the relentless waves of lust that crash through her body.

"Klaus please," she begs as she finally manages to get his jeans undone. "I, need-

He silences her with a deep assertive kiss, pulling her tongue into his mouth and sucking on it, making her groan and her pussy ache. She feels empty, hollowed out with need for him and impatient to be filled up again.

She flips him onto his back and in a flash of vampire speed stands and strips off what's left of her clothes so she can kneel naked beside him and watch his eyes turn almost black with lust as she throws a leg over his hips and straddles him.

"Caroline." Her name, a plea, slips past his lips as he lays his hands on her waist and looks up at her.

She frees him from his jeans and locks her gaze on his as she guides him to her entrance. He's looking at her like she's the only sight of heaven he'll ever get and she'd stay that way and just let him look at her like she's the brightest star in his sky if it weren't for that hollow feeling inside and the way it aches with need. So she takes a shuddering breath, keeps her eys on his, and sinks down onto his cock with a deep unladylike groan until she feels his sharp hipbones between her 's how they stay, caught, stock still and breathing hard, in a moment that looking back has always been inevitable.

Then he smiles and it's like _snap!_

She likes her romance more shades of Scarlet - O'Hara of course - than Shades of Grey. She always found herself too scornful of the clichés to get into the racy fiction Elena and Bonnie used to read back before their worlds went mad. "Puzzle pieces, seriously?" she'd scoffed once as she'd skimmed through a sex scene in a book she'd grabbed from Elena's bedside table.

"It's about destiny," Elena had told her, snatching back her book with a blush. "Like you're so right for each other your bodies just fit perfectly."

She'd rolled her eyes. "Boys fitting with girls isn't destiny Elena, it's biology."

She still believes that. Klaus' body fits hers the way men have fitted women since the dawn of time but when he smiles - When his happiness breaks out on his face she feels it, that click of completion, that elusive[2] snap. She smiles back, broad and bright as a summer sky and runs her hands lightly down over his stomach, enjoying the feel of him inside her and the rising sense of wonder in her chest.

Then he moves, rocks his hips up under hers and romance and rightness, even that perfect click, can wait because she's wanted this for so long and she finally has him moving inside her.

She braces her hands against his chest and uses her thighs to set a steady rhythm that makes him groan appreciatively and mumble praise of her body under his breath. He growls and pulls in a rough, controlling breath and the thought that she takes him so easily to the edge of his control makes her body resonate with a surge of sexual power so raw that she can do nothing but abandon her own composure to it. Her fingernails dig into this chest and she chases the sensations building with each coming together of their bodies, each grinding of her clit against him.

"Fuck," he mutters when her thrusts become ragged and hurried and she throws them awkwardly out of their flow with a frustrated whine.

He sits up and takes her firmly in his arms, one hand grasping the back of her neck, the other bruising her hip as he brings her lips to his. He moves her like a dancer taking a new partner, leading her with absolute confidence, and there's that skill she's been expecting. He guides each movement of their bodies, tips his hips to hit her just right deep inside and grinds her clit against him with every thrust.

She's babbling nonsense of the "Oh god, fuck yes" variety as he sucks on her tits and works her towards a climax she just knows is going to leave her barely remembering her own name. Then he lifts his head to kiss her hard and deep as he uses a strong possessive hand to grip her arse and bounce her up and down on his cock until she's grunting like an animal and coming all over him in a hot, wet rush that makes him growl, shattering [3] his control so that she feels fangs against her tongue.

In a second she's on her back, still reeling from her orgasm, ears ringing and head spinning as he pounds into her. He tries to pull his poisonous fangs away from her mouth but she's having none of it. Not when she's the reason he can't keep his beast contained and she's already building again beneath him.

She growls a reprimand as she grasps the back of his head and crushes their mouths together again, her own fangs clanking against his, drawing a little blood. He tastes of a power as old as her species and she opens herself up to it, to him, with relish, lifts her knees high up towards her own shoulders so that she can take him in even more deeply and pulls his tongue into her mouth greedily.

He responds by hooking her leg over his shoulder and thrusting his tongue deep into her mouth in the kind of kiss you have to be this far gone to enjoy, the kind that's wet and messy and invasive and makes her pussy clench violently with pleasure.

He tears his mouth away from hers to snarl her name in her ear as he drives faster into her, hips blurring with vampiric speed as he carries them both towards release. She's squealing and he's grunting and they're just fucking themselves right into a heaven they'll never find any other way. She gets there first, her body spasming violently around and beneath him and he snarls her name as he cums hot and hard inside her.

He buries his head in her shoulder and goes heavy on her as he relaxes with a deep contented groan and nuzzles at her throat. She hums in response and, feeling possessive and tender, wraps him up in her arms and legs making a prison for him with her body. _Mine_ she thinks, and maybe she accidentally says it out loud because he kisses her just behind her ear and mumbles, "yours" against her skin.

It sounds true. So if he's hers and she's his in return, does that make her the luckiest or _un_ luckiest woman in the world? She doesn't know, maybe neither, maybe both. He rolls them so that they're on their sides with him still hard inside her and strokes her hair as he starts up a lazy,languid rhythm.

"I love you," she says, because even now he knows she still hasn't said it out loud like that and she's feeling it so strongly right now she couldn't keep it in if she wanted to.

He brushes her hair tenderly from her cheek and his lips move noiselessly for a moment before he kisses her, quickly, and pushes his forehead against hers as he moves inside her.

When it's clear he's not going to speak she slaps him on the shoulder and gives him a hard look. "Seriously?" she snaps, "I can't get any for weeks because I don't say it but you-"

"Sweetheart."

"Don't sweetheart me mister," she gripes. Of course she knows he loves her - she's seen the lengths he'll go to for her, seen how he'll try and change and fight for her. And yes, she knows it's hard for him to open up. To push those words past all his defensive and self-doubt and lay himself open, but it's time he just grew a pair and spat it out.

"You can't doubt-" he looks dumbfounded and offended by her chiding and she cuts him off before he gets huffy and they ruin everything.

"I don't. Really I don't. Not for a second." she relents and smiles ruefully. "But I want to hear it, so you're going to man up right now and say it, ok?" She lifts her eyebrows expectantly and he shakes his head and chuckles, a low rumbling sound, all sexy and husky in his throat.

"You're a hell of a woman Caroline Forbes," he tells her with true admiration in his voice. She's about to speak, but his finger presses to her lips before she can say "damn right I am" and he looks at her with a sudden seriousness that makes her swallow in anticipation.

"And I love you," he finishes and she waits a few seconds for her heart to stop pounding before she tries to reply.

She pulls him so he's on top of her again kissing him, brief but deep, as he sinks into her. When they pull apart she runs her fingers through his hair and smiles. "I know."


	19. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

 **A/N Oh my its been forever I'm so sorry, what a bad written i am.**

"You'll be late love," Klaus tells her and she lifts her head from where she's trailing kisses down his chest, propping her chin on her hands over his stomach.

"Free first period," she gives him a flirtatious look, "I have time"

He lifts an eyebrow and fights a grin. "Time for what exactly sweetheart?"

She doesn't answer, just resumes her journey southward over his belly savouring the jut of his hip bones and the dip of his stomach. He's so lean, no part of him is waste, no ounce of fat or bulk. He hides his power in minimalistic lines of bone, sinew, and lithe muscle.

She used to think her type was the quarterback. The tanned hunks with bulging biceps and broad rippling backs that she imagined perfect Kens to her head cheerleader Barbie. As she runs her tongue to his navel, his taut abs jump beneath her mouth and she can't imagine ever wanting anything other than the wolf-like efficiency of his athletic frame.

When she takes him almost lazily in her mouth he moans contentedly and one of the hands he'd had tucked indolently behind his head comes down to toy gently with her hair line. She's in no hurry, she really doesn't need to be at school just yet and she's nowhere near ready to leave his bed despite that they've spent the whole night alternately dozing and making love. She calls it that in her heart and is determined to make sure that he, who has for so many centuries considered himself unlovable, understands that as well.

So she takes her time pleasing him, charts the quickening of his breath and every moan and whispered endearment. Makes a map of his pleasure and uses it guide her until he's moving gently in her mouth and moaning her name.

"God Caroline." His hand in her hair grips more tightly and she works her tongue against his tip as she sucks. The mumbled praise that escapes him, "wonderful girl, like that, good girl, fuck" makes her wet and when her own hand finds its way between her legs he groans his approval and shifts a little so he can watch her work them both towards orgasm. "So beautiful," he whispers and the awed sincerity of his tone makes her moan around him.

When his body begins to tense she drags her teeth over the sensitive skin and he growls and thrusts up in to her mouth as he cums. The taste of him filling her throat and the helplessness of his deep groan at the sight of her drinking him down tips her over the edge and she cums gently against her own fingers with a moan.

Then she's tangled in his arms as he pulls her back up into his embrace; he's whispering that he loves her into her hair and she's so happy she thinks she'll blow off school and just keep screwing him all day.

But her phone's buzzing and the number of messages from her friends and her mother makes her curse. "Shit, I gotta go."

"Alright love." He lies back looking content and lazy with his hand behind his head and a smile touching the corners of his mouth as he watches her dress. She thinks she's never seen him look so still.

"Love you," she says as she kisses him goodbye. She doesn't mean to, but it flows as easily from her lips as if she's been saying it for years.

He doesn't respond in kind but his smile is endearingly bashful at her words, and his lips under hers as she kisses him goodbye say more than enough.

She hums absentmindedly as she shoves her purse in her locker, her mind still half lingering in Klaus' bed even as her body goes about her school day on auto pilot.

"Jesus!" her heart jumps into her throat as she closes the locker door and Elena's amused eyes greet her, she's so pleasantly distracted she didn't even realise her friends was standing right beside her.

"Jumpy?" Elena laughs. "And-" the brunette looks pointedly at her watch, "-late."

She can't keep the grin off her face as she replies. "Only a little bit."

"Where were you?" Elena turns a little more serious. "Did you call your mom? She was pretty worried."

"I texted her," she replies. "I couldn't face another lecture about the terrible mistake I'm making."

"You told her about Klaus?"

"Yeah, she went completely off the deep end and I stormed out. Not fun." She flicks the lock and turns to Elena who makes a sympathetic noise.

"I stayed over at Klaus'," she continues with a saucy grin. "Which was way more fun."

The doppleganger's eyes widen. "It happened?"

"What happened?" Bonnie appears on her other side, but before she can greet the witch Elena cuts her off.

"Caroline stayed at Klaus'."

Bonnie rolls her eyes. "Oh _that_ happened."

"Sooo," Elena draws out the word teasingly. "Was it good?"

Sometimes she thinks there's something wrong with her and Elena. Because if Elena's pretty eyes can dance with vicarious excitement over her night with Klaus, despite all the agony he's caused, and if she herself can even bear to be in the same room as Damon Salvatore, let alone laugh at his jokes and tag along with his harebrained schemes?. Well then they are either the best, most forgiving people in the world or they are both utterly broken.

Perhaps they'd seen too much bad too young, perhaps their perspectives had got screwed up beyond all recognition. Or, perhaps they are simply immortal and on some level they understand that one day they will each be all the other has left of a time before the supernatural madness of their lives began. Perhaps they know, instinctively, how much that will one day mean.

She rolls her eyes but can't fight the grin that spreads over her face. "So good! And not just a thousand years of practice good." She looks down and feels her smile turn inward. "It was perfect."

Bonnie makes an exaggeratedly disgusted face and Elena laughs and links her arms through one each of her friends' as they head toward their next class. She looks at her friends, it's a rare feeling for them not to be under threat, not to be laid low by loss, and it's amazing how quickly they fall back into being teenage girls.

He looks beyond dashing at her graduation, with his hair neatly combed and wearing a suit that probably cost more than her car.

Her mother's subzero glare when he approaches them and playfully flicks the toggle on her cap notwithstanding, it's a perfect day. Later at the party, he drinks bourbon with Damon and eyes the bawdy teenagers with undisguised contempt and she preens a little at the excited questions from her cheer squad about the hot older guy on her arm.

When a drunken jock knocks into him and spills his drink she has to step in to rescue the stupid boy who's macho, "Hey watch it" dies on his lips when Klaus takes a terrifyingly calm step forward and smiles with bright white teeth.

"Babe, lets dance" she beams sunnily at him and puts herself bodily between him and the boy.

"I was hardly going to kill the boy for spilling a drink sweetheart," he tells her in amusement as he wraps her in his arms.

She just gives him an unconvinced look and lays her head on his shoulder.

Back at the mansion she bites her lip nervously as she debates how to sway him to go along with the latest part of her plan for his moral and emotional improvement.

She's fairly certain that if she brought it up directly he'd refuse; no matter, she's not above a little manipulation.

He gives her an opening almost immediately. "So love, your high-school days are over, how does it feel?"

"I dunno, I thought senior year was gonna be this epic rite of passage, but it was kinda anti-climactic, what with Silas, and," she looks at him sideways, "you know the whole being dead thing."

"Caroline-"

"I guess what I really need is a little bit of downtime," she continues innocently. "Get away somewhere and put high school, and the death, behind me."

He frowns at her. "You want to go away? Fine, anywhere you want, if you can only desist in constantly using one regrettable mistake against me."

"Regrettable? Seriously?" She rolls her eyes. "You killed me Klaus, actually killed me. That's currency for _centuries_."

He stills and tilts his head a smile playing over his lips and she suddenly feels awkward. "What?"

One step and he's right in front of her, slipping his hand in under her hair to lightly grasp her neck and look into her eyes.

"What?" she demands again and he smiles so warmly she feels it all across her skin.

"Just enjoying hearing you talking about our future in centuries, love."

"Oh" she blushes a little and looks up briefly at the heavens. "Oh my God I really did. Yikes, I'm actually thinking in centuries now. Centuries with you!" She pulls an exaggerated face to make sure he knows she's teasing. "Where did it all go wrong?"

"We'll go anywhere you want love. You name it and I'll take you. Paris? Rome?" he grabs her round the waist. "Tokyo?"

She laughs and throws her arms around his neck. "Great. How about New Orleans?"

"Oh bloody hell."

"Klaus Mikaleson finally brought to heel by a woman." Marcel flashes a brilliant white smile and salutes her with his glass. "I like her."

"Christ," Klaus mutters discontentedly and pours himself another large scotch.

"I prefer _set on the right path,_ " she tells Marcel and leans into Klaus bumping her shoulder affectionately against his. "I gotta pee, behave."

There'd been a moment when they first arrived in New Orleans that she'd thought that she'd made a huge mistake making him come here. She'd considered it the obvious starting point in her plan for his redemption, making peace with his son. But Marcel had been posturing for his lackeys and Klaus had snarled his accusations of betrayal until she'd thrown up her hands in frustration. "Oh for god's sake," she'd snapped. "Will you two listen to yourselves. You're like kids squabbling over who started it, Jesus how old are you?"

"Caroline-"

"No," she'd held up a hand and stared the hybrid down for a second. "We are going to take this to that bar over there, I'm going to drink wine and eat gumbo and you two," she'd hit Marcel with her sternest glare. "Are going to sit down and talk like actual grown-ups. If you're still at each other's throats by midnight I'll admit I was wrong and we can go home. Deal?"

"Sweethea-"

"Deal?"

"Fine."

She'd turned to Marcel who'd looked amused and shrugged, languidly tipping a hand in invitation for her to lead the way across the street to Rosseaus'. "Jane-Anne's gumbo is the best in town."

Two hours later and the hybrid and his adoptive son hadn't as yet done anything more confrontational than the odd jibe at one another as they'd drunk and she'd tried to keep the conversation moving.

She takes her time in the bathroom reapplying her makeup, and when she steps out she picks up their conversation from across the room.

"We thought you dead Marcellus."

"You didn't even look back to make sure though, did you?"

"No I did not," even from across the noise bar she can make out the sound of Klaus' shuddering inhale. "I could not."

"Too afraid of your papa?" Marcel's jibe sounds brittle and defensive and she's afraid they're heading back to square one.

Klaus surprises her with a soft sincere reply. "Too afraid of what I might see, afraid I could not have borne it."

Marcel looks down, there's a yearning in him she recognizes from the time when her father had hurt her. A yearning to believe he was still the person that loved her above all things, still the hero she'd believed him to be as a girl. She imagines Marcel worshipped Klaus once. A father and a saviour as powerful and charismatic as the hybrid would surely carve a deep furrow in a young boy's heart.

When Klaus looks up his eyes sparkle faintly and his expression is tense with emotion. "It is good to see you alive Marcellus," he says and she aches with love for him, her fragile monster, trying to be something better, not just for her but for the boy he once called son. "And believe it or not I am proud of you," he continues with earnest determination. "Of what you have achieved here."

Marcel doesn't have a response and she can see how heavy the moment is becoming between them so she bounces over and leans across them grabbing Klaus' drink. "Bourbon, cheaper than therapy and way more effective."

Marcel laughs bombastically. "Don't you be saying that around my girl, she's working damn hard to be one of those therapists you'd replace with a bottle of whiskey."

Something about that piques her interest and she tips her head curiously at Marcel. "You're dating a shrink?"

"Well she will be, just as soon as she logs the hours." The dark vampire smiles fondly at the thought of his lover. "Cami has a real way with the troubled mind."

An idea strikes her and it's out before she can think it through. "You should talk to her," she tells Klaus.

Affront and disbelief dance over his handsome face. "You want me to see a shrink?"

"Well yeah," she intones as if it were obvious. "You're a crazy person in case you hadn't noticed. It might do you good to talk to someone."

"I'd rather talk to you, love." Klaus smiles charmingly and she can easily recognise the attempt at distraction, she is coming to know him worryingly well, she thinks.

"Seriously? You terrify me enough already, a glimpse inside your head and I'll run screaming. Hey - just one session, Cami?" she frowns at Marcel and he nods his confirmation that she's got the name right. "Cami gets to log an hour or two and you get some couch time. It's a total win"

"Caroline-"

"Come on Klaus," she wheedles with a slight pout. "What are you scared of?"

"I'm hardly scared love."

"Well then its settled," she takes that as acquiescence and grins at his defeated look. "Great!"

Marcel hoots with laughter as he slaps Klaus' shoulder and she can almost see their bond beginning to knit itself back together. "Oh yeah, I like her."

"Good night, Camille."

Klaus closes the laptop and she glowers at him. "It's Cami, you know." She doesn't even try to hide her black mood. "She goes by Cami."

He leans back with something like irritated resignation in his expression. "Something the matter love?"

"Nope," she feels her own jaw tighten. "Just pointing out that literally everyone else calls her Cami."

"I'm sensing subtext."

She huffs but doesn't respond and he looks annoyed. "Caroline was it not you who insisted upon my embarking on these little chats with Camille? And yet now that they are proving useful you seem piqued."

"Yeah well-" She feels suddenly stupid, her jealousy, which had seemed to justified a moment ago, now feels ridiculously insecure. "I hadn't expected her to be so pretty."

His brow furrows and he looks surprised as he leans forward a little in his chair. "I would hardly describe Camille as pretty."

She relaxes against the counter ready to accept his reassurance, when his eyes spark mischievously and he continues innocently, leaning back and making an airy gesture with his hand. "Her beauty is far too classical for that, quite timeless."

"Ah!" She hurls a tea towel at him and he laughs as he catches it against his chest. "It's like you actually _want_ to sleep on the couch."

"Come on love." He makes a visible effort to check his mirth under her icy stare. "You're being ridiculous."

"Am I?" She narrows her eyes at him. "Don't think I haven't noticed her all dolled up and smiling at you."

"Caro-"

"And you encourage her with the 'loves' and the 'sweethearts' and the 'Camilles'." She draws the name out, butchering his accent and glaring at him.

"Caroline," he turns serious, finally realising she's not in the mood to make a joke of this. "You can't possibly imagine there's anything between she and I."

"And you can't seriously tell me that if you were both single you wouldn't be interested," she counters, hands landing challengingly on her hips.

"I'm not telling you that, sweetheart. I don't deny that she is a beautiful and remarkable woman. But the truth is I have bedded a hundred Camille's, even loved a few."

She feels her eyes bulge in shocked indignation at that and throws up her hands. "God, are you trying to make it worse?"

"The point is that I am a thousand years old, I've known love in all its forms. Possessive, passionate, gentle, manipulative, selfish and selfless. But of all the women across all the centuries-" He stands and steps towards her, leaving her in the limbo between the promise of an explanation and the words. "I have never trusted a single one of them with my heart. In this, as in so many things, you are unique."

And there she goes again melting into his words and into the hand he lays on her cheek. "And if you would trust me with yours," he continues looking so deeply into her eyes she feels like he must see every hope and doubt she harbours in her heart. "I would not break it; Least of all for something as banal as another woman."

He never does, though she thinks she cracks his a few times.

He gets better, slowly, so slowly that sometimes she feels like he's taking more steps back than forward. But she doesn't give up - this is the work her heart chose when she chose him, to love the best of him and little by little drive out the worst. She doesn't do it alone, Rebekah and Elijah are all too ready to pursue his redemption.

Cami, still his therapist and one of his most trusted friends even decades after she and Marcel parted, is her greatest ally in bringing out his humanity and she's grateful for that despite the ever present niggle of jealousy that this woman knows things about him that he may never tell her.

Marcel is a mixed blessing, he brings out a striving in Klaus that has nothing to do with her, a striving to be a real father. To be, in every way he can, nothing like Mikael. But Marcel also brings with him a fresh batch of enemies from New Orleans and the day she ran through the streets of the French Quarter in a desperate attempt to stop the hybrid at his worst remains forever caught in crystalline focus in her memory.

She'll always remember the moment she realized she was too late to stay his hand or to counsel restraint. She'd raced into Lafayette Cemetery with the distant sound of his growling in her ears just in time to see him drop the body of the last witch that stood against his son onto the pile of corpses at his feet. The blood had caked his hair and chin and he'd looked vibrant and terrifyingly beautiful in the fading evening sun.

"Klaus," she'd whispered in shock, nausea waving over her so she'd had to turn away. "Oh God."

Over the years he'd stopped killing innocents for her, had tried to be more measured, to not use others to get what he wanted. He'd slipped sometimes but he was getting there. This had been different though, this coven had threatened Marcel and for that he'd slaughter them a thousand times over. He would not repent it, not ever, and for the first time in their relationship she'd had to face that truth.

For days she'd struggled, seen the corpses in her dreams, heard his words afterwards, stopping her before she'd even spoken. "Don't, Caroline."

"Klaus."

"No. Marcel is my family, they brought this on themselves. I will not be chided by you or anyone else for this."

Could she, she'd wondered, accept the man who would go to such violent extremes? Could she understand his total unwillingness to seek a peaceful solution when it came to his loved ones? Her answer came after less than one troubled week.

Because that's when they'd come for Klaus. A sister coven of the one he slaughtered came for their rightful vengeance with powerful desiccating magic, they came to steal him from her. Did he deserve it? Over the centuries, of course. Recently? Yyes, probably. Would she seek peace or compromise when she came home to find four witches chanting over his greying body?

She found her answer as simply as he'd found his and, in the end, she didn't regret the corpses spread over their drawing room carpet vacant-eyed and bloodied.

She didn't think about them at all as she'd rushed to his side with her wrist already bleeding ready to restore him.

So she finds herself across the decades as they blur into centuries, bending and flexing around him as she remolds him with her love into something truly loveable. Not chained to loving a monster as she'd once feared but committed, stubborn as she is, to loving a man, a man as hard as steel and as fragile as glass, a creature filled with beautiful art and ugly violence.

"Sweetheart." He appears behind her on the balcony of their Parisian apartment, propping his chin on her shoulder and staring out over the darkened cityscape to where the Eiffel tower had stood long before. "You alright, love?"

She hums but doesn't answer, instead she turns in his arms to kiss him and revels in the way he reacts, the way he always reacts to her, as if it were the first time.

"I love you" she says impulsively, startling him. After centuries together they hardly ever exchange those three trite little words, they're so far past that.

"As I love you," he replies looking vaguely perplexed and perhaps even a tiny bit annoyed at having to declare something so manifestly self-evident.

So she laughs and turns away again to lean against him and watch the Parisian skyline, painting in her imagination the tower where she'd once called him a 'pig-headed sociopath', though she can't now remember why, and leapt from the highest floor just to escape him.

He still makes her that angry sometimes and she knows, from the way he clenches his fists and jaw, that she still regularly makes him feel murderous. But he's right to be surprised by her words tonight; their love hardly needs such proclamations, it has embedded itself into the earth beneath their feet, carved itself over the centuries in stone until it is as eternal, as deathless, as they themselves.

"Where next?" he asks after a short easy silence. When they'd first travelled the world she'd been all about guide books and itineraries but now she's been everywhere and seen everything she simply floats through the world on the breeze, making homes in any place that catches her eye and abandoning them just as swiftly. Still, they never have shaken the habit of her choosing their path.

"East," she suggests at random. "Moscow?"

He turns her in his arms. "It'll be bloody freezing"

"We'll buy coats."

He shakes his head in mock aggravation, they both know how much he loves to indulge her. "Fine."

"But first," she walks past him to the bedroom with a swing of her hips and a seductive glance over her shoulder. "Paint me like one of your French girls."

He chuckles at the old quote and follows to find her already stretching herself out artfully on the rumpled sheets.

The sound of his brushes on the canvas is as familiar as her own breath and the smell of oils and his skin are the only home she'll ever need.


End file.
